


Back to the Wall

by SpaceCadetDHD



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Ace John Sheppard, FebuWhump2021, M/M, POV Elizabeth Weir, POV John Sheppard, POV Rodney McKay, Slow Burn, Wraith (Stargate), trying to keep up with the challenge and so this is evolving as it goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 25,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29569767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCadetDHD/pseuds/SpaceCadetDHD
Summary: The Wraith separate Sheppard and McKay from their crew and John accidentally ends up Running...
Relationships: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	1. Mind Control

**Author's Note:**

> * * *
> 
> I wanted to give febuwhump a try because it seemed like fun! And it has been! I just added in the extra challenge of trying to treat it as one on-going long fic instead of a series of drabbles. That proved more challenging than I expected. So it meant going *slower* than expected and ultimately not finishing the febuwhump challenge in ~~febuwhump i mean~~ February. So it's now Just a WIP, proofed and good to go!

“Next time we go through the ‘gate, remind me to check the seven-day weather forecast first,” grumbled Lt. Colonel John Sheppard. He wiped at the water on his face, not trusting his vision because he knew the rain wasn’t the problem.

“I don’t have _time_ to tell you how impossible it would be to set up a MALP for that, so shut up,” returned Rodney McKay. The scientist was a special kind of grumpy as he huffed along through the mud. They were still two miles from the stargate, soaked to the bone and shivering as they sweat under their gear, and - just to make things truly interesting - hiding from Wraith scouts.

John had put Ronon Dex in charge, let their own scout and former Runner call the shots under the circumstances. He and Teyla Emmagan had lifetimes of experience to lead from, and John trusted them to do it, especially when their team was so far behind unexpectedly enemy-fortified lines with limited options. He knew running wasn’t their chief scientist’s favorite pass-time, but McKay was stuck with it just like the rest of them, and he seemed to be okay so far. Their luck just had to hold out a little while longer.

It, and Ronon’s instincts, got them half a mile further in the right direction. They dodged through trees and under broad umbrella-like leaves that made it hard to keep a solid line on their destination and their footing, especially in the rain, but they stayed hidden and hadn’t been stunned and paralyzed yet.

That’s when Rodney started showing signs of trouble. He slipped a few times, slid over mud and tripped over tree branches he didn’t see fast enough to jump. John had their six and was a few steps too far back to keep him going through the near-misses. He caught his friend by the back of the vest and encouraged him to keep going, pushing when he couldn’t run alongside. They started to lag behind, but John could still see Ronon dodging branches, so he split his attention to keep them on track.

Rodney suddenly stopped, his body jerking sideways into John, dodging something only he had seen. Sheppard caught him by the shoulders to keep them both upright and risked letting him stop to catch his breath. He leashed him in again to keep him from running the wrong way, kept him mostly facing him so as to not lose their direction. John shifted slightly to keep the rest of their team in sight and nearly slid in the mud but Rodney caught him and they didn’t fall.

The rain had them both squinting at each other, Sheppard's hands on Rodney's shoulders to make him look at him. The Colonel kept his attention on the forest but he made sure that he claimed Rodney's.

"What?" John asked, keeping his voice quiet but loud enough to be heard over the tin-roof cacophony of broad-leafed plants being pounded by the rain that surrounded them. "What was that?"

Rodney pointed past John's shoulder into the thick grove of trees. There was nothing there. Rodney seemed confused and dangerously close to panic. He had seen something, obviously spooked by it, and now it wasn't there. That was an entirely different level of _spooked_ because it meant he had seen the shadows of the Wraith, which were so much worse than just seeing those ugly bastards' faces spying back. The shadows meant the Wraith were close, stalking and _herding_ , instead of just chasing.

"We're just tired," John said, panting and frustrated. He tugged Rodney back out to the muddy animal trail. "Let's go."

The problem was that Rodney didn't move with him. He dug in and caught at John’s arm, shaking his head. “No.”

“What the hell- Rodney… Listen-” John began, but Rodney cut him off, refusing.

“They’re right there. We- we stay here,” he said. John stepped back toward him, careful, listening to his friend’s tired breathing. He kept blinking, wiping at the water in his eyes, and seemed stuck. It had been a long twenty-four hour trip through the ‘gate this time, and it had rained for a lot of it. The guy was probably exhausted and John didn’t blame him for it, but Rodney had probably picked the worst place possible to freak out on him. He clasped his shoulder and squeezed, stepping back in to try to get Rodney’s attention off the unknown shadows in the storm.

“Come on, man. Let’s go catch up,” he said, trying one more time to coax his friend the easy way. He still had a good idea of where Ronon and Teyla had gone, he could still find them, if Rodney would just start moving again. Rodney looked at him, clear eyed and suddenly immune to the rain as he made a fist in John’s jacket collar. There was a sudden shout from up ahead, Teyla’s voice dragging John’s attention away from Rodney and back to the trail. 

“Rodney! No!” Teyla yelled, just barely audible over the sound of the storm and the distance between them. John frowned, confused, as he looked back at Rodney. His friend still had a firm hold on his jacket and his expression changed, cloudy and distant; the man was not in control. He had seen it before, when Teyla had interacted with the Wraith on their handy long-distance spy-line, and he didn’t like it any more on Rodney’s face than he’d been tolerant of it on Teyla’s; they were _his_ team, _his_ friends, and not puppets for the Wraith. 

Sheppard jerked his shoulder back, ordinarily not a problem when Rodney was still rusty at offensive fighting instead of defense, but Rodney caught hold of his hair from the hold on his jacket. His friend took a hard swing at his jaw with his free hand, packing more power than seemed remotely natural, and stepped in to follow it up with a leg between his knees to bring him down. Thanks to sheer surprise alone, it worked. And it was probably an unavoidable fact that his jaw was going to hurt for a day or two. _Shit_.

The mud sucked him down, his gear painfully twisting Sheppard down to his side. At least his head didn’t bounce off anything on the way down, and he managed to get his arms under him quickly, to pull himself out of the muck. 

“Oh no. Oh shit,” came Rodney’s voice as his friend seemed to come back to his own brain. 

John scowled at the ground and shoved up to look back at him, only to instead see the sharp, stabby-end of a Wraith stunner inches from his eyes. A quiet, electric _whomp_ announced another Wraith stunner being used and John flinched reflexively at the power that hit somewhere over his head, taking Rodney down. He stumbled forward, slamming into John’s shoulder, and that was gonna hurt when he woke up. The double-bladed, curved bayonet point spun away from John to keep McKay from landing on it. It wasn’t much of a reprieve, though, as a second later, John’s entire nervous system lit up like a Christmas tree and he blacked out.


	2. “I can’t take this anymore.” - Alt: Allergies

Even after a stunner-provided nap, the exhaustion of the last few days left John irritable and tired. Rodney was his best friend but sitting in the Wraith cell, listening to him bitch about their impossible situation, he thought really seriously about returning the favor of the busted jaw. McKay hadn’t taken a full hit from the stunner, so he was up and walking and moving before John had full control of his toes back. Maybe Sheppard was getting too old for this shit; his jaw hurt, his back hurt, and the muddy clothes chaffed him up in places he didn't want to go chaffing, damn it. He was almost glad the Wraith had taken their vests because that probably would have hurt, too.

After one more logical complaint that they were _never_ getting out of their current predicament without Ronon's useful hidden stash of knives, John barked at Rodney to stop pacing and shut up. Rodney blinked at him for a moment, considered it, and then moved to sit next to him, snug up against his shoulder so they both sat along the weird, alien-fleshy wall. 

"I'm just saying, I don't see how we aren't well and truly screwed," Rodney grumbled. At least he was quieter. It was more agreeable to John's headache that way.

"You're not exactly wrong, McKay. It's just… I don't exactly want to hear about it anymore, that's all," John replied, speaking very carefully around his sore face. "Let's pretend some flash of genius will strike and that miracles happen and just… roll with it."

Rodney pursed his lips and set his jaw against his opinion on that and reluctantly nodded. Glad for the momentary peace, John leaned into his friend. 

"Besides," Rodney went on. He had made it almost a full minute of quiet. "Teyla and Ronon aren't here. They made it out. Someone will… do something."

John scoffed. That was, admittedly, an adorably naïve outlook. “I usually have to threaten Elizabeth to let me go after anyone, you realize that, don’t you?”

Rodney balked. “Well, yes, but Ronon likes us. Or you. He likes you. He’ll… threaten. Elizabeth. On this.”

John shrugged and nodded; he certainly had a point. Rodney allowed the quiet for another moment before he raised a hand, shook a finger in John’s general direction. “And just for the record, it’s beyond ridiculous that you have a _usual_ for these scenarios. It implies there’s a serious problem with our livelihood and our prospects for survival.”

“So far we’re not doing bad on the odds,” John replied.

“The odds aren’t exactly useful in this situation,” said Rodney, volume threatening to go up again. John winced and waved him back down. The man glared at him, which was preferable to anything louder. 

John rolled his eyes. “Well, when I can feel my feet again, I’ll go pace in front of the door, because _that’s_ useful in this situation.”

The call-out settled in and Rodney turned his glare out on the empty cell again instead.

“Come to think on it, I liked it better when you were passed out,” he grumbled back. 

John nodded, gingerly touched his aching face before crossing his arms against the cold. “So did I.”

The quiet won out for a little while after that. John started to shake off some of the tingling, fried-feeling and tried to walk off the last dregs of it, because pacing in front of the gate was _actually_ useful for something, not that John would admit that out loud. It also put him helpfully between the apparently psychic-sensitive Rodney and the Wraith when their keepers showed up. 

Given that the Alien Bastards could apparently mind-hack John's favorite genius, he wanted to keep them as far away from Rodney as he could. He grabbed onto the bone-like bars of the gate, as casually annoyed as he could manage, and glared out at the three Wraith who showed up. 

"You could have left us with our food, you know," Sheppard pointed out, rather than bother with the usual fake niceties. "It's a bad idea to starve your food. Removes the nutritional value and all that."

"You are from Atlantis, correct?" Apparently the new Wraith didn't want to play, either.

"What do you care? Food's food, right?" John asked, wary.

"We are not, as of yet, in search of a meal. I asked a very direct question," the Wraith replied. The slight reprieve didn't spell out anything good for the two Earthlings in their care, however. John clenched his hands around the bars and figured he would have to pick the fight to keep it away from Rodney.

"John Sheppard, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF. I'll skip the serial number since it's not likely you'd understand anyway." He smiled out at the Wraith. "There you go. A very direct _answer_. Now can I have my PowerBars back?"

It wasn't the answer the Wraith wanted. And in short order it got John the fight he was spoiling for. The gates fluttered open in their eerie, halting swing, and the Wraith in front reached over the threshold to grab Sheppard by the arm. He shrugged out of the hold before the sharp, pointy manicure could stab into his sleeve and instead got in a little-too-high angled tackle to shove two of them away from the gate. All three of them were armed and John just had to get hands on something, even if it was just a knife, if he was going to have a shot in hell at getting them off the Wraith ship. They just needed to get to a Dart, then they could fake it from there, and it had to start with a weapon.

John heard the gates close behind him as he took the Wraith down with the grapple around the ribs, managed a short jab against alien body armor that hurt more than he was counting on, and was shoved off before they even hit the ground. He had definitely taken the lead Wraith to the floor, but damn, the thing had faster reflexes than Ronon. And the knife hilt cut John's knuckles when he hit too close to it, but close wasn't good enough to win him any prizes.

John found himself on the ground and looking up at Wraith again, this time with one of them kneeling on his ribs and a hand at his collar, dangerously close to the feeding-zone, and another Wraith standing over them with a boot on his wrist. It wasn't exactly where John had been hoping to end up when he picked the fight.

"You misunderstood me when I said we weren't hungry," the Wraith leaning on him said, pointy teeth dripping as he smiled. "We feed when we want… we would just prefer you stay alive a little _longer_."

"Important clarification," John replied, trying not to be breathed on by the alien in his space. He jerked to the side, trying to get out from under the hand at his chest, and the Wraith dug his nails in. The hand just below his collar shifted to cover his heart, his shirt tugging at his neck sharply. It was a drawn out threat and Sheppard scowled up at him. He was scared out of his damn mind but he could project as much breathless " _Fuck you, asshole_ " with a glare as anybody else. That was about all he could do.

The pain hit then to let him know it wasn't just a threat. A few long seconds of electric, crushing, boiling pain that John remembered well enough from the iratus bug bite months earlier. It wasn't that different, but it went a lot deeper than his neck, or a cut on the arm. He closed his eyes and tried not to scream. 

Then suddenly it was over. The pain was still there, but not as sharp, just a shadow, and it eased off the jarring seizure in his spine so that, overall, he could breathe again. The Wraith lifted up off his chest and John curled his arm back in to block the thing having easy access to another meal. He turned a wary eye on the Wraith still kneeling over him, surprised to see the normally green-pallor of the Wraith's skin had turned rather… blue. 

"What the hell-" John tried to back away as the Wraith started to convulse, like a silent sneeze or the hiccups or something, that seemed to rattle his whole body. He hissed and narrowed his eyes and reached for John. There was an ineffective scuffle before the Wraith again had fingernails dug into John's chest. The pain was different this time, warm instead of sharp, pulling together instead of apart, and nothing got crushed. John could breathe through it, and he stared up at the Wraith in confusion. The alien released him and shoved him toward the guard who had been so handy with the boots.

"What are you?" the Wraith demanded. "What did you do?"

The guard hauled John up like a rag doll, but surprisingly, nothing hurt at all. Even the bruised jaw from Rodney hitting him had gone away. John risked a glance over at McKay, still tucked safely behind the cell doors and staring back at him, wide eyed. There was something seriously weird going on but even the genius didn’t have the answers. John went back to ignoring him so the Wraith would leave him out of it.

"I didn't do anything," John said, as belligerent as possible despite the shock. The Wraith who had fed on him got in his face then, ready to hiss out something or other, but John cut him off. "Why are you blue?"

"That is _exactly_ my concern." The Wraith's non-feeding hand reached out and clamped around John's neck, a perhaps more real threat than the feeding would be for a while, and Sheppard hurried to block despite the guard holding him in place.

"Oh my god," came Rodney's voice, at probably the worst possible time to remind the Wraith he was there. "The virus. The… the anecdote from the bite before… it must still be in your system…"

"What is he talking about?" the Wraith in his face wanted to know. John tugged on the hand around his neck as a hint and the Wraith backed off, slightly, but kept hold of him. In light of the threat, John tried to keep his explanation simple.

"A kid bit me a few weeks ago. One of _your_ kids. I started turning blue and scaly, so our doctor came up with an antivirus thing to kick your venom stuff or whatever out of my system. Worked out… pretty good…"

The Wraith growled, a hard, rumbling sound that John felt in the hand at his neck. Then the clawed fingers tightened and tugged him away from the guard. Rodney jumped back as the cell doors unfolded and John was shoved inside. They collided, neither minding so much as they stumbled back and away from the threat on the outside. The blue-faded Wraith stared in at Rodney, teeth bared and eyes just barely not glowing.

"Don't look at me!" Rodney said quickly. "I got the shots too."

Approving of the quick thinking, John nodded. "You're gonna be allergic to both of us. Might as well send us back where you found us," he said. The Wraith let out another frustrated, incomprehensible noise, and stomped from the cell. The doors shuttered closed behind him. All three of them stalked off, the blue one stumbling a little in his hurry. Probably off to whatever passed for a Wraith doctor. John raised an eyebrow and looked over at Rodney.

"Are you shitting me?" he asked, careful to keep his voice down. "Is that really freaking possible?"

"Why not? He built the damn thing off the iratus bugs and what he already had from Hoff. It had to get the… well, the building blocks of the Wraith DNA out of your system to get you back to normal. Genetics aren't my area, but it makes sense they wouldn't respond to it any better than that virus did," Rodney whispered back at him. John caught his arm and tugged him back, away from the gates, back to their earlier spot against the wall. 

"Let's go with that then, but something tells me it's not going to convince them to send us home," he said. Rodney nodded. He was distracted, though, and reached over to pull John's shirt away from his chest. John looked down, seeing what he had noticed: the feeding mark had been partially healed. 

"What the-"

"He drained you, and then... gave it back. It was weird," said Rodney, frowning as he looked back up at John's face. His eyes were searching, studying John all over, like he didn't trust what he was seeing. 

"So I'm not old or anything?" It sounded stupid, but John asked it anyway. "I _feel_ fine…"

Rodney harrumphed at him and crossed his arms, muttering something about Kirk syndrome under his breath. John lightly smacked his shoulder.

" _I'm_ not the one who thought the Wraith spy-chick was _hot_ ," he shot back. Rodney silently mocked him for it, glaring at the gate rather than look at him.


	3. Imprisonment

His watch said they had been gone for forty-eight hours, and the tension stressing his muscles as he sat on the hard, cold floor tended to agree. All the paralyzed coma from the stunner weapon had done was kill time, there was no relief in that sleep. Since then, John had paced himself to exhaustion and he was hungry and angry.

The Wraith didn't seem to know what to do with them, once they found out Sheppard could turn them blue. They didn't see the blue guy again to find out how permanent the trouble was, but there were the random onlookers who showed up, stuck their heads between the bone-bars, and squinted their eyes at the poisonous humans. 

None of them thought to bring food for their prisoners, though. 

It was cold in the cell, like it had been outside of it, which John reasoned meant the Wraith weren't actually cold-blooded, like their appearance and lifestyles would have otherwise indicated. John and Rodney had both been stripped of their jackets when their gear and vests had been taken. Or left behind. Who knew. They woke up without them, either way, and missed them as they shivered in the cell.

It became a larger problem the further they got from Rodney's last meal. On top of his general default irritability clashing with John's pent-up anger, he started to get the shakes, and his attitude turned back toward panic. John searched his baggy pockets and found a piece of gum and an unopened jawbreaker that had been missed. The gum was enough to back off the shaky balance and the jaw breaker was small but it would get McKay through the next blood-sugar drop.

They stayed quiet, conserving energy as much as not having anything to say. It wasn't like they hadn't been in impossible situations before. They had said it all and heard it all and there was no sense replaying the classics. And John's jaw did that annoying shivering clack any time he tried to talk anyway; he had fully acclimated to the temperate weather on Atlantis and now couldn't for the life of him remember how he had survived McMurdo.

Somehow Rodney heard the chatter over the sound of his own chewing every last bit of glucose out of the gum. He pulled on John's arm as he sat beside him.

"Come here," he said, an order if ever John had heard one. He raised an eyebrow at him.

"What? I'm right here," John replied.

"Yes, and you're shivering. And I'm overheating. You're too far away for us to help each other," said Rodney, slowly because he was apparently having to explain a difficult concept to a moron. "You're wasting a perfectly useful human ice cube. Come here."

Rodney was a human space-heater so John didn't exactly mind being called an ice cube, but it was an awkward enough suggestion. They were just supposed to hug it out until the Wraith brought them a blanket? Maybe a meal? John frowned at his knees as he debated it. Rodney tugged on his arm again. There was an element of personal pride keeping him where he was, too; John had been through every idea he had toward getting them out of the cell, none had yielded any results, and he really did want a hug. Especially from his friend. John would gladly take any small comfort to make him feel better about being trapped behind organic, alien bars he couldn't even gnaw his way through. It was pitiful and allowing himself that seemed stupid.

Rodney tried again and John relented, rolling up onto a knee and hesitating, not sure where he was supposed to go to get closer. Still sitting up against the wall, Rodney shifted around a little and then tugged him in, John's shoulder against his chest and back against one updrawn knee. The other crossed John's lap, and the two were fully entangled, arms draped at each other's waists. 

It would be a very compromising position if any US military contingent were to show up to save the day. But that wasn't likely. And Rodney was warm. John slumped into the hug, relaxed in the cold quiet of the Wraith cell. He told himself not to overthink it, just take the mutual comfort on offer, and warmed his frozen hands tucked up against Rodney's stomach. Rodney's hands clasped together at his hip, despite the fact that John's shirt had ridden up a little, so warm skin against cold skin felt welcomed. 

"Good idea," John said after a few minutes, when he was warmer and his teeth didn't chatter. Rodney nodded but surprisingly didn't gloat. John fell asleep curled into his friend, despite the danger of the Wraith prison around them. They were still human, they needed rest to survive. Just then, they were as safe as they were going to get for a while. 


	4. Impaling

Even after as close to actual sleep as either of them were likely to get, John woke up feeling worn down. Rodney was shaky and sweating in the cold, blinking more than natural for him as he fought back the disoriented fog that came from too long without food. The jawbreaker was a gamble; it might work or it might not. He kept the wrapper and kept spitting it out rather than burn through the whole thing at once. He kept quiet and it wasn't normal. He wasn't okay. John paced, keeping an eye on his friend, but ultimately useless to him. 

He found he could climb the weird gate, tear fleshy chunks off the walls and weaken certain spots, but it didn't give under his weight at all. The walls just healed as he dropped down. It left Sheppard's hands covered in a gross slime and caused a foul, burnt smell throughout the cell. Given that the smell could be a poisonous gas as easily as anything else, John gave up on the effort again. It was back to pacing the floor, checking in with Rodney when the man got too quiet.

"Look, I'm not feeling great," Rodney said eventually. "I think - well, if I get bad enough- do you know what to do with seizures?"

John shook his head. "Nope. And I'm not going to have to. You won't get that bad."

"Don't be stupid," returned McKay with a scoff. "You can't bully me out of a seizure if it comes to it."

"Positive thinking, Rodney. _Not_ bullying," John clarified, just as sharp as Rodney had been about it. But John was out of ideas and he wasn't going to listen to anything about seizures when he couldn't stop them to be much help there, either.

Maybe Rodney was on his way out if he didn't get food soon, but John still had enough in him to pick a fight. Barely; he wasn't sure how long he could last if he had to watch Rodney crash any further than he already was. Health-stuff wasn't his area, and neither was watching friends die slow. 

But the Wraith seemed to have forgotten about them and things were definitely getting worse. So John resorted to the timeless classics: grabbing the bars and shouting for attention. It eventually worked, but not before he had pissed off Rodney and nearly shouted himself hoarse in the process. 

The blue-tinted Wraith was the one who eventually showed up. He was still splotchy blue and pissed off. _Good_ , John thought, not even trying to keep it off his face. 

“The food needs _food_ ,” Sheppard informed him. 

“There’s none in the offering,” the Wraith replied, smiling through his drippy, creepy teeth. “We have nothing edible for your kind. And our usual methods for dealing with this issue are not available, given that were we to let you near the pods, you would poison the hive.”

“Then what are we still here for?” 

“You may be useful. Eventually.”

“Not if we die first,” John pointed out, just barely keeping his tone civil and not a growl. “Get him food or he dies soon. That’s how this works. Humans need food. Need water.”

“And I told you, we have neither-”

“Then get some!” John kicked the gate between them. “Find a planet, _get_ food.”

The Wraith was somehow entertained by the noise, his smile never fading. But he didn’t give in to the petulant demands of his prisoner, either. The bastard started backing away until he casually turned and left. John kicked the gate again, shouted after him to make sure the alien knew he was a cowardly bastard blue-faced piece of shit. The addition of the name-calling didn't seem ultimately effective, only managed to make Rodney mad at him. 

"Are you trying to get us killed?" he wanted to know. John ignored him and went back to kicking the gate. It wasn't metal, it was some kind of organic, so maybe it would eventually break.

"You realize these things are thousands of years old, right? Which means their ships are probably going to outlast your boots and all you're accomplishing is adding to my migraine," Rodney pointed out, annoyance obvious. John stopped making noise then, because he wasn't accomplishing anything, and he wasn't in it to hurt McKay. He leaned against the gate and glared out at the shadowed hallways that led off to places he couldn't reach.

It was a few more minutes before the Wraith showed up again. This time he brought his guards, and the gates swooped open in front of John. 

"You. Out." The blue-faced Wraith waved a hand in gracious invitation. John didn't trust it.

"Why?"

In answer, one of the guards lowered their stunner weapon. Rather than threaten Sheppard with it, though, the Wraith simply pointed it at Rodney and fired. John ran forward then, charging the one with the big gun to get it away from the cell. He didn't know if McKay had been hit, but he wasn't risking a second shot hitting him if the first hadn't. The trouble was, John was two days without food, he was angry, and he was physically exhausted; his movements were clumsier than he realized and he didn't have the strength to even leave a bruise on the likes of the Wraith. 

Instead, he got knocked in the head and stumbled, seeing stars for a moment as he caught himself on his knees. The guards dragged him up by the arms and he was half-carried along the halls. He was still disoriented when they dragged him into a room with multiple raised tables, weird half-walls in random places, and the Wraith's fleshy-machinery scattered around.

Not a good place to be.

Sheppard dug in his heels and started to fight. The Wraith stepped close and caught him by the back of the neck, leaned in face to face close enough to bite. "You wanted your food. This is how to obtain it. Be still."

The threat was probably worse than the reward, but John was low on options. And the promise of food was going to be bullshit, but… what if it wasn't? Curiosity and hope did him in, and John didn't fight. He was instead slammed down, face-first, on one of the weird tables, the things built the same as the gates of their cell. A smooth hybrid of organic material and metal, unnatural against his skin. It smelled terrible. And just like the gates, the sides folded and unfolded at the whim of the Wraith, and John was pinned down by boney, fleshy bars that fluttered out from nowhere and trapped him under criss cross pieces. His hands were free but his arms were trapped at his sides, with no wiggle-room at all around any of the bars. Panic had him shoving the back of his shoulders into the bars, but nothing moved, no give at all, no corner to wriggle into.

There were more of the bastard-Wraith then, not just the blue-splotched one and the guards with the weird masks. One of them caught John by the back of the head, a handful of hair tugged up between the bars to make him show his face. 

"I think this is folly," the Wraith said, though he wasn't talking to John.

"They must be useful for something. And we can't risk them poisoning the ship," said Ol' Blue. He approached carrying something that looked like a hollow spike, tapping it against his hand. Then he and it disappeared from John’s view, messing with one of the alien machines nearby.

"The risk to the ship is why they should be dead," said the other one.

"These are from Atlantis. We need the location and their defenses first," replied Blue. "They stay alive."

"Fuck off," John spat at them. He tensed as his head was bounced down off the table. He lost track of the Wraith around him for a moment, his ears ringing to match his swimming vision.

"Be still," came the warning from Blue, and John didn't care to listen. A moment later, though, something stabbed into him. A sharp pressure bit down into his back, just at the edge of his shoulder blade, along his spine. It struck fast and then stayed there, with something digging around against his bones. It took a minute for John to realize he was shouting; he couldn't hear his own voice through the rush of pain screaming louder in his head and down his limbs. There was a new terror when he realized he couldn't feel his hands anymore, or much of anything else except the pain just to the right of his spine.

Someone had the brilliant idea to remind Sheppard to breathe, but he couldn’t figure it out, too focused on the pressure against his spine that threatened to cripple him. When it finally eased up - leaving behind the sharp burning sensation but at least taking away the heavy weight centered over his shoulder blade - John managed to pull in air and remember basic necessity other than processing pain. He still couldn’t move, and it wasn’t just because of the barred net that pinned him down. Nothing was communicating out along his limbs, other than how much everything hurt. John seethed, face trapped against the weird table and neck pinned under the trap of a bar. Even he couldn’t understand the efforts he made at swearing and it all came out as angry noise. 

The Wraith shushed at him, just a hissing noise, and moved closer to the table. He looked distastefully down at Sheppard before reaching out to put a hand against his back, under his collar and dragging the shirt back to put his hand over the spot that hurt the most, that felt like a gaping wound over his shoulder blade, blood soaked and slick until the Wraith dug in claws. The pain changed then, just a memory of it clinging to him, and John could actually feel his fingers again. He jerked against the bars trapping him down, angry and afraid of it happening again more than actually able to move. 

“I told you to be still. You didn’t listen,” said Blue. John glared at him. But he went still. The Wraith stayed back from him, the one who had healed John’s back looking down at his blood-covered hand, lip curled in disgust. Blue lines crawled up like veins under his jacket, so whatever was still in John’s system was working against any of them who touched him. It was a small relief, considering there was no way to communicate that to anyone back at Atlantis. 

“I don’t like this,” said the new Wraith. 

“He presents a challenge,” said Blue. “We should adapt.”

The Wraith wiped his hand on John’s shirt sleeve. “Take him back where he was. Away from here.”

Blue was happy to oblige, especially when he discovered John couldn’t quite keep his feet under him. Everything felt like jelly-soaked cotton. Nothing worked. And John _wanted_ to get away from them so he didn’t argue as the guards all but carried him off.


	5. “Take me instead.”

The Wraith dumped Sheppard back in the cell with Rodney, who thankfully hadn't been shot with the stunner. He had dodged and slammed his head against something on the way down, so he had some new color and grime on his jaw, but he was conscious. And their hosts had remembered the PowerBars and MREs they had stolen with their gear, which was also returned to them, minus the weapons. Rodney had a PowerBar sticking out of his mouth when he rushed over to where John stumbled after being shoved into the cell.

"What happened?" Rodney asked, voice muffled by the food. He hurried to swallow it and put the remainder in the wrapper in a pocket as he caught John's arm. He was a welcome balancing point and John accepted the help, still not steady on his feet. Rodney got a palm smeared with blood for the effort though and started swearing. "What happened to your back? John? Talk-"

John nodded. "Gimmie a minute."

Rodney hurried him to the corner where he had set out their gear on the emergency blankets he had pulled out. They weren't exactly comfy but they would be warm, so John didn't argue when he sat him down and shoved the blanket at him. It was left with a bloody handprint on the silver surface. Still startled by it, Rodney wiped the mess on his pants leg and tugged at the hole in the back of John's shirt, trying to find the source of the damage.

"They stabbed me with something. Hurt like hell," John said, his arms huddled into the blanket as he leaned into his knees. Rodney gave him the half-eaten PowerBar.

"Eat. There's more. And your shirt in your bag. And our jackets." He certainly sounded more aware than he had been ten minutes earlier, but now worried and frantic because there was visible blood and it was now on _him_. Rodney started pulling awkwardly on John's shirt. "Get this off. If you're bleeding, we have to stop it-"

"Okay, okay." John was shaky from hunger and shock but he didn't think he was bleeding anymore. All the same, he followed orders, tugged the ruined shirt off to let Rodney check the damage on his back. Using it as a towel, McKay wiped the shirt all around his right shoulder, cleaning up the mess. And John crunched on the half of the energy bar. It helped a little.

"There is nothing here. Just… wait. This is barely healed…" Rodney poked very near the point on his back that had been the source of trouble. John couldn't see it but he could sure as hell feel it and he jerked his shoulder out from under the touch. Rodney dropped down off his knees to sit at John's side, facing him. He looked almost green, his eyes wide as he put things together in his head. He held up his hand, thumb and finger rounded together in a circle about an inch and a half in diameter.

"It's about that size. Already healing. Not bleeding," he reported, sounding somehow more miserable. "Look, I didn't see the one Carson took out of Ronon, but you don't think… I mean-"

John just nodded, chin tucked into the blanket folded over his arms. He could _feel_ something move whenever he moved his shoulder. It had to be the tracker. Maybe he was imagining it. The tracker was certainly the most positive, _least_ doomsday-scenario his imagination could provide, anyway. "Tracker."

Rodney stared at him, frowning, before finally digging into one of the packs for John's other shirt. Blanket still over his knees, Sheppard reluctantly sat up to put it on. He was out of backups, but at least he wasn't stuck in the bloody one, and hopefully the tee would last longer. He took his jacket back, too, and then draped under the emergency blanket again. It wasn't much, but it helped keep off the shakes. 

He watched Rodney dig for more food, mechanically accepted the new, unopened energy bar he was handed. When Rodney pulled out the radio earpiece, John snagged it and put it on, more habit than usefulness, and Rodney dug around again until he could find his. It wasn't much, it didn't even work for anything other than to talk to each other in the same cell, but it was a small tie to home.

They were in trouble. The food would only last a few days, and then what? John couldn't go anywhere near Atlantis with a tracker in his back, even if they could steal a Dart, and he was the only one who had ever flown one before. And they would be lucky if Rodney could keep the Wraith out of his head that long.

When it came to the Wraith, John wasn't exactly any more of an expert than Rodney was. They probably both had the same technical knowledge of the aliens and their tricks, though Sheppard had gone hand to hand with them more often than Rodney. But if they were after information, that was something John figured he had important experience with that Rodney didn't. 

"Look, they said they want to know about Atlantis. They want a location, they want defenses," he began. Rodney looked up at him, PowerBar slowly crunching.

"Wait, that was _torture_? They stabbed you for information?" he asked. "What'd you tell-"

"Nothing. But that's the thing, Rodney. They didn't ask me. They don't have to. When they figure it's safe to try, they'll just try hacking your brain again. Right now, they're worried about the antivirus still in my blood, but my point is, we don't know how long that will last. They keep trying-" John stopped and shook his head. "Look. When they try to get in your head, think of something else. Like, a brick wall. Or a beach. Or… or flying-"

"So things I don't like?" 

"No- nothing you're scared of- shit. Nothing with, like, emotional attachment… shit." John didn't know how to explain it and it was too important to screw up. "I saw them do it to Sumner so I kinda… I just went the opposite of anywhere the voice in my head went. Her voice - the Wraith, she sounded different. Do the _opposite…_ "

Rodney was trying to follow, John could see the wheels turning in his genius brain, but he was still sluggish from starving. Just like John was trying to think how to explain when he was shaking from adrenaline, hungry, and still scared of the pain he had just come down from. They were working from a disadvantage, and who knew how much time they had to waste.

"When you hit me, what did you hear? In your head. What made you deck me?" he asked, looking for anything more useful than what his own head was giving him just then.

"You weren't listening, you were going right for them," said Rodney. John nodded.

"Except I _wasn't…_ so something _told_ you I was, and you listened and they took over. Remember what _that_ was that like."

Rodney sat with that puzzle for a little while, eating and thinking, which John hoped would be the combination to pay off in the end. It was something else to think about instead of the cell around them, anyway. John reached for the pack and found the water bottle; it was frigid like everything else, but water was water. 

"Okay, but I'm shit at lying," Rodney said after a minute. 

"Don't lie. Go somewhere else. Redirect. Think of what _you_ want to think of, not what they want," replied John, shaking his head. "Lie and they'll get you. I don't know, recite pi or something."

"I can do that," said Rodney, suddenly excited to have a plan, any plan, in the midst of the _absolute nothing_ presented by starvation in a Wraith prison cell. John nodded, as much agreement as approval, and huddled under the blanket, his shoulders trembling up to his jaw. The quiet was welcome, even the sound of Rodney eating was reassuring. They were still together, they had food, and they had a plan; that was all actually an improvement.

"Why the tracker though?" Rodney worried out loud. John looked over at him, chin tucked in against his elbow, and gave a slight shake of his head. The only answer he had there was one he didn't like, so he wasn't going to say it. He would deal with it when he had to. Just then, he was working through shock, his body still adjusting to the leftovers from the pain, from whatever had been shoved into his shoulder. While he could recognize the response and logically understand it, that didn't make it any easier to think through as the adrenaline spiked.

He zoned out staring at the shiny edge of the blanket wobbling as he breathed, and Rodney shuffling closer brought him back a little. His friend was frowning at him, the concerned face again, as he settled in at John's side, shoulder to shoulder. He set a careful hand to his arm, patting in an awkward effort at reassurance, and John tipped toward him. Rodney shifted to catch him as John leaned in for a hug, his brain too fuzzy on all the details to remember why he wasn't supposed to curl up on Rodney. His friend was safe, helping, and warm, and John wanted to be in his space. Rodney let him in, so he stayed there until he started to feel at least a little recovery. 

Eventually he let Rodney up again and the scientist started pacing. John stayed slouched under the foil blanket and they both stayed quiet. There was a tension there; they were both waiting, and they didn't know exactly what for. But there wasn't anything else to do. 

Because they liked to be helpful, the Wraith showed up before too long to answer that for them. The cell doors opened and two of the guards let themselves in to stand just inside the gate. 

“John Sheppard. Get up,” ordered Blue. John hardly had a chance to get to his feet before Rodney was standing bodily between him and the Wraith.

"Take me instead-" he tried. John stared up at his back, jaw slack. _What the hell, Rodney?_ Still, John shoved himself up to stand behind him, not about to let him be stupid on his own.

"In due time," said Blue, lurking in the hallway beyond the gates. "For now, if the two of you are to eat, your friend will have to provide it. As you may imagine, we are not welcome around your kind and do not have access to what you need to survive. You may keep what he finds for you."

That was not the expected response. Rodney hesitated, glancing over at John, uncertain. It wasn't that they trusted the Wraith… but on the issue of obtaining food in a prison cell, they couldn't exactly afford not to, either. 

Steeling himself for a very long day, John took a breath and edged past Rodney. He checked the packs on the floor, finding his and emptying it out onto the blanket he was leaving behind. He kept some water and an MRE and left the rest, making plenty of room to bring back whatever he could find that wasn't some kind of citrus. Then he very gingerly shouldered the bag, testing it out. He could handle it. He was better.

Rodney didn't like it, based on the very deep lines on his face, and the way he opened his mouth to argue. But words didn't actually come out. He grasped at John's jacket sleeve, just a little tug, but then crossed his arms and hung back. "Fine."

"I'm sure I'll be back before dinner," John offered lightly.

"Oh, you're crazy if you think I'm waiting on that," replied Rodney. "After the last day? Oh no. No way."

"Good call," said John, and he felt at least a little better about it. Rodney wasn't going to keel over from shock or seizures while John was gone. He still was uneasy as he reported to the Wraith at the cell doors, not quite sure what he was in for.


	6. Insomnia

It had only been two days. That wasn't a long time, when it came to most off-world activity. AR-1 had been gone for two days before Ronon and Teyla returned with the news, so two days wasn't terrible. There was still a chance. 

But this two days felt different to Elizabeth Weir. It was two days without her chief science officer and two days without the military lead for the entire expedition. They were vital members of her team, and they weren't just off-world. They were missing. The threat of the Wraith that Ronon and Teyla had reported made it even worse; the Wraith had been in the area, though there was no guarantee that they had found Colonel Sheppard and Rodney. It would be hard to believe they hadn't been found, however, after Teyla's report. 

All of these things played over and over in Elizabeth's mind, every time she tried to close her eyes to sleep. She needed sleep, the human body required it, and under stressful situations it became especially important. She knew all this, knew she had a responsibility to her team and to the expedition to take care of herself especially now that two of the other ranking members of the expedition were unaccounted for. She had to stay sharp, had to be able to process logically despite the high emotions stirred up by their missing friends. When her body demanded it, she had to sleep.

But the lists of everything that had gone wrong, everything that could go wrong, everything that might go wrong because of it… they all demanded her mental attention the moment she tried to take care of herself. John and Rodney couldn't afford to sleep in peace, if they were still alive. They didn't have the luxury of sheets and hand-stitched quilts, or the comfort of pajamas to sleep in. It was wrong that she could, when her mind told her very clearly there were hundreds of things to be worried about and taking care of in her friends' absence. She kicked the blankets back, too hot anyway, too stressed. 

Teyla had a sensitive, telepathic ability when it came to the Wraith. When they broadcast their shadows and tried to sneak into people's minds, Teyla could pick up on it, whether the aliens were just talking silently to each other or they were trying to manipulate a victim. And Teyla had reported, very firmly and confidently, that she had experienced the Wraith manipulating Rodney. She had heard their whispering and tuned in, but she said she had been too late to get through to him. The Wraith had broken her connection to them, but that didn't mean they had left Rodney alone. She had said they were close. To Elizabeth, it sounded almost impossible that Sheppard and McKay had not been caught in whatever net the Wraith had set out. It sat there in her mind, a certainty, burning away.

Elizabeth finally sat up, head in her hands, as she gave up on sleep. Her mind was too busy. There was so much work to do. She needed rest, she was physically tired and wouldn't last the long Atlantis days without it. But if Teyla was right, the attack didn't make sense. It wasn't how the Wraith usually operated. They usually culled a planet with Darts in the air, longer ranged weapons causing chaos that they could control, and the technology that captured their victims with minimal risk.

According to Ronon, they put teams on the ground when they were hunting Runners, specific targets. Surgical strike teams weren't interested in culling. And the village that AR-1 had spent time with hadn't been culled. They were far from the stargate and secluded, and Lorne had taken a Puddlejumper out to check on them, so the community was still whole and safe. The Wraith hadn't been there for a feeding frenzy. And Ronon didn't like the fact that he and Teyla had been allowed to get to the stargate themselves and leave; he said he figured it meant they had gotten what they came for.

Elizabeth found the comfort of her robe and went out to the balcony outside her room. She stared down at the city from high above, seeing the glowing lights everywhere and the shadows that fell across the ship's walking paths. Atlantis was an amazing, beautiful place, especially at night, under the stars. 

And the Wraith, presumably, remembered that. Their culture was old. Their bodies were old, from what Carson had learned. If the Wraith had gone after AR-1 on some kind of hunt, it was Atlantis they were after. And they had caught John and Rodney, Elizabeth couldn't kid herself on that no matter how much she wanted it to not be true. The two people who became most dangerous to the city in enemy hands were now assumed to be in the hands of the Wraith. The Wraith, with their ships, and their hives, and their mind control and their life-draining feedings.

Elizabeth sunk against the railing, elbows against the wide, cool metal, and set her head in her hands. She didn't know what to do. But she was certain on one thing: she had to somehow plan to defend Atlantis against John Sheppard and Rodney McKay, not just the Wraith who held them. 


	7. Poisoning

Trusting the Wraith to actually do what they promised wasn't exactly easy, but Sheppard paid attention as he was marched to the section of the ship that held the Darts and left on his own out on a platform. Blue and the guards hung back, supervising, and John stood by, waiting, not being shot at. The Dart flying over was the last thing he saw before he was suddenly out in an open field, in broad daylight, a high contrast to the cold dark of the spaceship. He stumbled to the ground, disoriented as he materialized on the Dart's demand. It was warm, and there was tall grass around that hid him, and John took a moment to just wait, get his bearings, and breathe.

He could deal with planets. Especially if they had a stargate. John couldn't go home, but he could put out the call for help. They were still alive and their friends needed to know that. The logical assumption was that there would be a 'gate somewhere nearby, that the Dart had probably arrived by one, and also that they would have put him down somewhere near civilization if he was actually supposed to find food. If it was all some weird ruse to start him running like Ronon had gone through, the rules were probably different, but John had never pried into the man’s life to figure out what the rules might be. So without anything to the contrary, he was going with the assumption that he was supposed to find food.

All in one piece and not being shot at, John headed out in search of either a village or a stargate. The planet he had been dropped on looked a lot like Hoff, with some of the same fruit trees scattered around. They were almost like apples, but softer, with ridges like oranges, and they smelled sour. He just didn’t remember if the fruit was actually edible or not. Just in case it was, he paused long enough to pick some that looked like they didn’t have a lot of bugs on them. He tried a few berries that seemed safe enough, wishing at once that he had paid more attention on previous trips to other planets and grabbed more food from the stash on the ship. He was burning energy, in a hurry, and getting hungrier than his single MRE was going to satisfy. Considering he didn’t know how long he would have on the planet before the Dart showed up to scoop him up again, he didn’t want to take the time to eat until he found more food.

He stumbled across a run-down looking brick and stone house eventually and John scouted around it, looking for signs of life nearby. The closest thing he had to a weapon was a sharp rock, heavy enough to do some damage as long as he didn’t accidentally cut himself on it. With no other humans or otherwise in the area, he approached the hut carefully. The door was unlocked and opened into an empty home, the contents looking about as developed as anything he had seen on Hoff or that he would have expected from the Genii. There were drying herbs hanging from strings across the ceiling and various sizes of funny shaped bottles lining the windowsills and along every shelf in the room he let himself into. A working table near the door had scraps of material all over it, including tools like scissors and knives. The knife was too big to be hidden, though, so John left it where it was.

John quickly spotted a cabinet with cupboard spaces behind a table that looked close enough to a kitchen area and headed for it. He discovered wrapped blocks of what seemed like cheese, and linen bags with dried fruits and grain-stuff that looked like cereal, probably some kind of trail mix, and chunks of what seemed like jerky. Fresher foodstuff sat in baskets arranged as drawers inside the cabinet. He had hit the jackpot on the first try and felt actually terrible about it as he stuffed the cheese and the jerky in his pack. Some of the fruits he had collected on his walk sat in the baskets, so he left a few of the things he had picked off in trade. They must be edible if someone set up so well had a stash of them, but it worried him a little that he didn’t see among their collection any of the berries that he had been eating on the way in. 

Letting himself back out, John tried to latch the door the way he had found it. He poked around the porch area curiously and found more scraps of burlap-like material, snagging some for his rock. The little house revealed a set of pathways heading away from it and John tracked the one that looked widest and the most well-traveled. As he walked, he wrapped the material around his broken chunk of rock, tying it up to keep the sharp edge away from his hand, turning it into something he could swing around and not lose track of. The knife would have been better, but getting caught with it on the ship was still trouble he didn’t want. Because he _was_ going back. John wasn’t leaving Rodney on that ship alone longer than he had to. 

Following the trail eventually led him to a larger community, a little town, with multiple little run-down houses and other buildings. They had brick frames and glass windows, covered porches, the whole nine yards. The street wasn’t paved, but it had rock all over it, a gravel covering against the rain, and little narrow flower bed boxes. It was a quaint little village that, under other circumstances, John and Teyla could have probably gotten some good trade out of. Now, John was on his own, unarmed, and hoping that their cute, well-trained public rose bushes meant they were friendly enough to give him free food and point him in the direction of the nearest stargate. It was, in hindsight, probably a good thing Rodney had cleaned him up and he wasn’t covered in blood anymore. 

A few people stopped and stared as John strode down the center of the community’s main road. He tried to smile and offered a wave that he hoped was a universal enough greeting. 

"Hey, folks," John said, cautious as he made his way along, step by step further into their territory. He hadn't come though the stargate and there was no telling if their languages in this place would translate at all. There were a few awkward glances between the locals, no one exactly volunteering to get stuck helping out a stranger. Finally someone walked out to greet him. John stopped moving as the other man took a trajectory to block him. He held his hands up to show they were empty; the rock was tied to the strap of his backpack and easy enough to get to, but not exactly a threat yet.

"I'm just… looking for help," he said, experimenting with honesty under the circumstances. The stranger who approached him frowned at his words and looked him over. The blond man carried a broom, of all things, like a shopkeeper from the old west, and was probably no older than John. 

"What manner of help?" he asked. John smiled, breathing a little easier as he understood the man's words.

"I'm just trying to get home, but I need food," he said. It seemed smart to avoid mentioning the Wraith or the tracker in his back just then. "And directions to get back to the stargate… I got a bit turned around and lost…"

"Stargate?"

"Uh… Ancestral ring? It's this big circle-thing, sometimes lights up…" Sheppard stupidly pantomimed a circle with his hands. Being trapped on another planet felt very different when he was alone, without his team and without a P90 in case his mouth got him in trouble. He had to be careful in ways he was a little out of practice with.

"The Well?" asked the local. "You came from the Well?"

John was sure he remembered other planets referring to the stargate as the Well before and he nodded. "Yeah, that. I got lost trying to get back to it, is the thing."

"Very lost," said the man. "It's a full day's journey from here. Back along the way you came."

That was not good news. John had already been gone an hour. Hiding his frustration, he scrounged up a smile anyway. "Is there a road to it?"

"Somewhat, yes. And with the dawn, the Chancellor will take the offering to the Well, should you need a guide to ensure you don't get lost again."

The escort would be welcome but the timing didn't really help much. John wanted to stay as far away from other humans as he could, not knowing when the Darts would return.

"Thanks for the offer, but I need to head back before then," he said. "So it sounds like I need to start walking…"

"You won't make it to the Well before night. It's not smart to risk it," said the man. Various onlookers nodded their agreement, some clucking at John's decision. He stomped down the surge of anger from their useless opinions and tried to shrug it off.

"I don't have a lot of choice," he replied. "I'm due back home two days ago, and I don't have the food to keep me out another two days as it is. No place is safe to stay-"

"There's raiders on the roads at night. Not to mention the animals," replied the stranger. He shook his head. "We can pull together the food, but you'll lose it to one or the other. It won't do any good."

"I'll take my chances, and any help I can get," said Sheppard. But he felt his stomach twist at the warning. He had already survived the Wraith... maybe raiders and wild animals added to the equation were pushing his luck. But he had to be back out and away from people whenever the Darts showed up again. 

The man with the broom nodded and introduced himself as Cyrwin, and a moment later escorted John to another house that looked a lot like the one he had already snuck into. There, he was introduced to the man's wife and kids, and their dog, and renewed John's determination to get the hell out of town before any Wraith showed up to look for him. Sera, Cyrwin's wife, wasn't quite as comfortable with helping out the strange man who didn't want to accept any hospitality, but she still scrounged up a few days worth of meals for John to take with him. Breads and some kind of bean paste in a little jar and a bag of nuts like a trail mix… John was so hungry his stomach hurt but he put everything she gave him directly in his pack. He would eat when he got back out of town. 

She saw him making room around the apple-like fruits and frowned at him. "You walked from the Parfel Orchards?"

Not knowing the answer to that, John shrugged. "There were a few kinds of trees there, but I don't know any of the names," he said. He held up one of the fruits from his bag. "Are these actually edible?"

"Those, yes. But nothing else from that land is… the fruits of nearly every other tree and bush there are foul. The animals refuse to go near the orchard entirely. They should not be eaten. If you go through that way again…"

John went still. "I ate a batch of berries near where I picked these."

Cyrwin took notice of their conversation then. "Oh. That's… not good."

"How much _not good_?" asked John. "The _dead_ kind?"

"Well, you should certainly see the doctor…" began Cyrwin. John was quick to interrupt him.

"That's not exactly an option. I just… need to know what to expect here. I'll figure it out on the road if it hits me."

The two strangers were nice about it, but John's insistence on leaving was making them wary and they stopped trying to convince him what was good for him. They warned him of the dangers of food poisoning and, while it didn't sound like any kind of fun, it seemed like John could live through anything that hit him. They packed extra food, though, because they didn't think he would keep anything down for a day or so. 

"I think I'll be fine," John assured them, shrugging into the loaded pack. "It's been a couple of hours. I would have been knocked down by now if it was going to."

Sera gave him an unimpressed smile and just reminded him to steer clear of the Parfel Orchards this time, stick to the road Cyrwin set him on. She probably knew he was lying, that the stomach ache he had blamed on being hungry and anxious for two hours was maybe not _just_ that. But until John started losing his lunch, he was operating under the assumption that he would be fine. He had to be. He had to get to the 'gate.

Cyrwin and the dog walked John out to the road he needed to take and then down along it for a few minutes, offering up last minute wisdom on how to avoid trouble with the raiders, and what to look out for in terms of the night animals. John had a flashlight and lighter in his gear, so one way or another he could make sure he kept the road in sight, even if he had to make a torch the old fashioned way. 

Before he parted company, though, Cyrwin left John with a knife. Nothing too big, but the right size to do more damage than his rock sling, and small enough to hide in his jacket or boot. It was odd to be met with such kindness, in John's experience, and he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, like with the Hoff or the Genii. But he appreciated it.

Cyrwin headed back to his home and the dog kept along following John. He tried sending him home, shooing and trying to give the order, but the big rust-colored mutt with the funny face just trotted along beside him. Sheppard called back up along the road at Cyrwin, gesturing to the dog rather than try to explain. 

"He'll be home for dinner, always is," Cyrwin shouted back. So John ended up with an alien dog for an escort and kept on along the road. He kicked a stick and the dog chased it, brought it back to him, and John entertained the both of them along their walk by playing fetch. That was definitely a new experience, playing fetch with an alien dog, alone on another planet. John wasn't _supposed_ to be having fun just then, he had work to do, to make sure he survived and that Rodney made it off of a Wraith ship. It just happened as an accident and John didn't argue.

He had been walking about forty minutes when he realized he had slowed down. He wiped sweat off his forehead even though the sun hid behind an overcast sky. His best guess said he still had hours of daylight left, but he had no way of knowing for certain. The dog trotted along beside him, occasionally hitting his knee with the stick to ask to play. 

There was a moment of concern when John finally realized that he couldn’t multitask on walking and playing with the dog because he couldn’t focus. He felt disoriented and stopped to look up and down the road, making sure he was still going the right direction, that he hadn’t gotten turned around when he had thrown a stick somewhere along the path. 

The dog _thwapped_ him with the stick again and John looked down at him. It wasn’t the heat or the dog that was messing with his head. This… was much worse. 

“This is the damn berries, isn’t it?” he asked the dog. 

The dog wagged his tail, completely unhelpful. John blinked at him, confused, as he briefly thought the dog had a third eye in the center of its fluffy forehead that he somehow hadn’t noticed over the course of the past few hours. It was just a normal, two-eyed dog, though. That was definitely the berries. John looked out at the fields around the road, trying to sort out if there were any safe places to go to ground, eat some food, before whatever trip he was about to take off on kicked in. 

The worst part was the tension in his stomach, whether it was the stress from the warning about the berries or the actual berries themselves he didn't know, but it was a definite distraction from the rest of his assortment of odd symptoms. He could handle getting high and seeing three eyed dogs for a little while, but the other symptoms Cyrwin and his wife had listed off were not going to be easy to keep walking through. 

John dug into the bag for the water and drank as much as he dared. He tried to keep walking as he did, mostly because he was stupidly stubborn and he needed to find the stargate, not get sick. He pulled out a piece of the bread he had been given, though, even shared a shred of it with the three-eyed dog. 

At some point, however, his legs stopped working. He stared down at his boots, at a loss for why he wasn't able to make them move. His stomach clenched painfully and he pitched over as he wrapped his arms around himself, trying to contain the pain. The dog bouncing and barking around his legs tripped him the rest of the way into the rocky dirt and John stayed there, stuck. He looked out at the fields and saw little red Wraith popping their heads up over the grass, one even sitting in a tree twenty-five yards away, all just staring at him. Wide smiles with creepy sharp teeth. 

The dog pounced on him, making everything worse with noise and claws that dug into his shoulder. John heard the barking but it slowly warped out like a broken synthesizer version of what a dog was supposed to sound like. It was a bad trip, with the bonus of food poisoning, and nothing like John had ever dealt with as a stupid college student, experimenting with uppers to get through exams, and later long days on the job in Afghanistan trying to stay awake for days. The purple-colored sky was kind of cool, but it definitely wasn't fun.

The dog disappeared at some point, zapped up by a beam from a Wraith Dart, and Sheppard tried to crawl to the side of the road furthest away from the threat of the little red Wraith demons. He didn't lose his lunch through any of it. But he did pass out.

He woke up at least a little bit when someone started talking to him, tapping his face, shaking him by the jacket, but actual consciousness still wasn't possible. His vision swam and he saw strange colors, not quite able to focus on the human faces interacting with him. He knew everything hurt. 

It was safer to stay where he was, oblivious to everything that felt wrong when he opened his eyes. So he did.


	8. “Hey, hey, this is no time to sleep!”

It was still bright out when John realized it was safe to open his eyes. His head wanted to split in four pieces at odd, unnatural angles, but he was back to seeing colors on the spectrum he was familiar with. His internal organs were all still on fire, too, and he felt like he was drenched in sweat, or maybe he had just rolled himself into a bog, who the hell knew. He hid his face behind his hands and tried to focus on figuring out how to move in order to sit up and lose whatever was left of his last paltry meal.

"Careful, you're close to the edge again," said someone, and John startled, promptly discovering exactly what edge they had been warning him about as he fell off of it and onto a hardwood floor. He squinted up at something that looked like a bed. _Oh no_.

"That's the third time you've done that this morning," chided the voice. John looked over as Sera walked up to where he had crashed. She knelt to tug at his shoulder and pull him back up to the furniture that was probably more comfortable than the floor. He tried to wave her off as soon as he was upright because of an automatic surge of nausea that came with being vertical, but she kept a fist in the shoulder of his shirt and pulled a bucket down off the bed. Her timing was perfect and saved John from having to feel bad about being sick on her floor. 

"A few more hours, you'll start to feel better," she said. She pulled a towel down from the bed then, too, so he could wipe his face. 

"Are you a nurse or something?" John asked, once he thought he had his voice back.

"No, I work with animals, not people," she replied. She patted his shoulder. "You're just getting predictable."

Confused by the comment, John tried to pull himself up onto the bed next to him. Sera helped with minimal fussing, but she checked his forehead for fever like he was a child and frowned at him. "Well, maybe a bit more than a few hours. But you are _closer_."

"What- how did-" he trailed off, not sure where to start.

"This is your second morning here, Colonel," Sera replied. "The doctor has been in to see you four times. You've eaten a few meals but don't seem to be able to keep anything down yet."

John stared at her, jaw slack. "I don't remember any of that."

"For a little while, you didn't remember your own name," Sera replied. "This is the most aware I've seen you since you first got here."

John felt anything but _aware_ just then, mostly cotton-brained and sore all over. But it was definitely an improvement over the past two days, apparently.

"Well… thanks," he managed. Sera patted his shoulder, muttered something as she walked away that John didn't quite catch. He was suddenly too concerned with the way his stomach lurched and he had to grab the bucket again. He needed to get out of their house and away from town again, but he couldn't even sit up without getting sick. Walking was definitely not happening. 

He dozed in and out, only realizing it because the room got darker in between the times he opened his eyes. Eventually he woke up to a clatter of noise as Sera and Cyrwin and the dog and the kids rushed around the room in the dark. They didn't speak but they crashed into chairs and each other and scrambled to collect things from different places around the house. They had a lantern between the four of them. John stayed down, not understanding what was going on and opting to close his eyes again.

“Hey, hey... this is no time to sleep!” Cyrwin caught his shoulder and shook him awake again. "We have to move!"

"Move what?" John asked, blurry. Cyrwin frowned at him.

"You haven't paid attention to anything we said, have you?" he asked. John blinked back at him.

"You were _talking_?"

"Yes. Now move!" Cyrwin did not explain himself further, only caught John by the arm to pull him up and inserted himself under his shoulder to help him stand. John tried to keep up, relieved when he wasn't sick the moment he was on his feet, and stumbled alongside the man around the couch - couch, not bed. _Boy, was he out of it_. - to another part of the room. There was a hole in the floor and an overturned piece of furniture, and John realized it was a trapdoor down into a cellar because the lantern light was glowing from the opening. Sera's head and shoulders poked out above it, the woman waiting with a hurried frown. _Okay, hiding_. They were _hiding_. He could figure this out. John stumbled down the stone steps, using the wall to support himself and leaving Cyrwin and Sera to close the hatch door. 

It was nicer in the dark, very damp, and John realized he didn't have a fever anymore because he could actually notice the difference. He breathed a little easier as he slumped against a wall in the shadows, looking back at the two kids huddled with the dog, and all of them watching Cyrwin and Sera close off the stairs behind another set of doors. The lantern was moved far from the sealed off opening. The room was tense and John was the only one not afraid, because he didn't know what he was supposed to be afraid of. It reminded him of a storm cellar and he listened for tornado warning sirens somewhere up above them on the street. All he heard was quiet, but he didn't exactly trust his senses yet. 

He looked around at the room they were in, guessing it was about the same size as the main room of the house John had seen when he had first arrived in town. The room John had apparently been sleeping in for two days. It didn't have any of the drying herbs or flowers hanging from the ceiling like it did upstairs, though. There was another pantry-cabinet with bottles stacked in the open cupboard spaces, and baskets that probably had some kind of food in them. There was a doorway to what looked like a bathroom, but it was hard to tell from the lantern at the back of the room. The main difference was that there were no doorways to bedrooms, so the back wall had a couple of bunk beds built into it. That was where the family had retreated to, leaving a perfectly useable set of couches and chairs in the middle of the room, untouched. 

Not sure what they were hiding from, and afraid to ask because even the eight-year-old child and the dog were being silent, John stayed where he was, sitting against the stone-lined wall on the floor. He might have passed out a few times as they waited. There was something hitting him as _wrong_ about the whole thing, something he was forgetting, a reason why curling up against the wall wasn't really a good option, but Sheppard couldn't remember what it was. He was better, but he was still blurry. He would figure it out eventually.


	9. Buried Alive

Rodney didn't trust his watch anymore. It seemed to keep time, seemed to show the hours ticking away, but it felt too slow. At the same time, it seemed to be going too fast. It was impossible that the Colonel had been gone for two days. That didn't make sense. They had sent him down somewhere for food, they said, and nobody had really bothered Rodney since. Not that he missed the Wraith's company, but that wasn't… _natural_. Was it? 

They just left their prisoner alone, with his food stash and his foil blankets, only peeking in to smile at him every so often. Rodney was starting to feel like a pie in a bakery window case.

Where was Sheppard? If anyone should be a pie, it should be the guy whose name sounded like “Shepherd” anyway. Not that Rodney was volunteering the man for anything, but he was hungry, and John and his stupid hair and his other parts added up to a certain kind of edible package, if he was being honest with himself. And what was with the man being cuddly on him, damn it, that hadn’t been fair at all, either. Maybe it had been Rodney’s idea, but that didn’t mean John had to listen to him.

 _Crap_. _Moving on_. 

If John had been gone for two days, then they had both been gone from Atlantis for roughly six days, and separated from their team for four of those. Elizabeth wasn't going to be happy. Zelenka was going to be panicked about keeping the city afloat without help. The stupid off-world trips weren't supposed to last a week, and the end-goal definitely wasn't to end up forgotten in a Wraith jail cell. 

Forgotten was, admittedly, the safer option, though, and Rodney tried to stay quiet and unnoticed. He wasn't going to start kicking the gates and yelling for attention again until he ran out of food. He had worked it all out and between his pack and Sheppard's, he had six more days of rationed meals, because they had starved for two, and John wasn't currently there to eat any of it. 

In the interests of staying quiet and busy, Rodney ran down the battery on his laptop trying to find comparable data signals that would let him hack the Wraith ship or communicate with Atlantis or anything useful at all. There was nothing there to find, but he tried. And a dead laptop battery was a good thing because it meant there was no possible way for the Wraith to access the information on it. Soon his laptop and tablet were both just five pounds of dead weight bricks. He kept them in his backpack afterwards anyway, just in case a miracle happened and he got to grab his gear and go home. 

Once they were dead, though, he was left with nothing to do except worry and stress. He did manage some sleep, thankfully, but that only got him so far. Two days was a long time. There was pacing and rambling to himself and a couple of anxiety attacks that he wasn't sure he would survive. Rodney was used to doing things. He could work through stressful situations by literally working, his hands repairing technology and his brain running the math to make it work. 

There wasn't _anything_ that Rodney could do where he was, locked in a cell, surrounded by Wraith, on his own. The possibility that he would never see Atlantis again became suddenly real. He might not see John again, because the Colonel was supposed to be with him still, and something had already gone wrong there. 

Out of ideas, Rodney went back to the old idea, trying to break into the wall to reroute the locks. It wasn't much different than the previous efforts, but this time, Rodney got caught at it. The Wraith that John had turned blue checked up on him while he was elbow-deep in the biomechanics of the wall, and all Rodney could do about it was shuffle back and try to hide the mess on his arms. The Wraith didn’t seem pleased to start with, the usual gloating smile more like a sneer, and Rodney messing with the door just seemed to light a fuse. He opened the gate and was on Rodney before he could take more than two steps back. He didn’t even wait for the guard with the mask to step in, _oh no_ , just had to get all hands-on himself.

“Your kind are not usually so much trouble,” he growled. He grabbed Rodney by the arm, just under the shoulder, and marched him out of the cell.

“It’s a mental stimulation thing - I was just bored…” Rodney managed to say, not quite as affronted by the accusation as his voice made him sound. He was scared because Wraith claws hurt and he didn’t exactly like pain, or his prospects in general, but what else did they _expect_ him to do with his time? “Hey, ow-ow-ow…”

“The ship will heal. It is an annoyance,” the Wraith replied. “Your Colonel Sheppard is missing. _That_ requires more work.”

Rodney tripped over his boots and dragged a step, accidentally landing himself in a square-off with an angry Wraith. “Wait-wait. He’s missing- you said _missing_?”

The Wraith growled at him and tugged his arm again, rougher than was strictly necessary, but Rodney managed to catch up without having anything dislocated. “But the tracker- you put in the tracker, right?”

“Yes. A tracker. Which is apparently not strong enough to withstand the poison of your biological system,” replied the Wraith. He was very unhappy and likely to take it out on Rodney. He jerked Rodney's arm to make him walk again.

“Right, my system, too. Same stuff. It’ll do the same thing to me,” Rodney said, lying for everything he was worth. 

“Yes. Again, an annoyance,” replied the Wraith. He was not at all making Rodney feel any better. “We have to be very careful with our systems because of this.”

"Then where are we going?"

"When there are little buzzing insects creating problems, the problem gets removed," said the Wraith. 

"Oh... I'm a dead man," Rodney said, barely breathing.

"Not yet," replied the Wraith. 

And Rodney supposed at least that was true, he was technically still alive, and he had Wraith claws digging into his jacket to prove it. But he still ended up in a hallway along a section of organic wall, in what seemed like a darkened, dead section of the ship. Everything was colder than the cells, and Rodney saw a Dart fly past the far end of the hallway, so he was somewhere near the ship's version of a flight deck. Random, unidentifiable things were stored in dark spaces along the walls, in contrast to other areas of the ship where there had been human bodies stashed away in little, fleshy, stasis pods.

For a moment Rodney considered the Darts and their storage capacity. Being sucked into a Dart's computer was probably preferable to anything else, so Rodney almost relaxed. Maybe he would be zapped into millions of pieces but at least he wouldn't know about it.

But _no_ , that was _not_ to be the problem-removal. He was instead shoved into the wall, in a crevice filled with the same stinking, organic skin that Rodney had dug into when he tried to get at the door controls in the wall. 

"Nononono," Rodney muttered, catching hold of the edge of the pod-like hole in the wall to try to pull himself back out. The Wraith caught him by the neck and shoved him further into the shallow pod. The dead space lit up faintly around him as he struggled with the fingers wrenched around his neck. The flaps of organic material started to grow and heal across the pod just as they had every time Rodney and the Colonel had torn into the wall. 

The hand with the claws traded off for weird tendrils of the wall pinning Rodney back into the pod, just as he had layers of the stuff folded over his arms and chest. The layers across the opening closed up when the Wraith pulled his hand back and Rodney was stuck squirming to get loose inside the pod. It was warmer as the layers stacked up, wrapped around his limbs as fast as he could shake them loose, and he couldn't get the stuff off his neck.

It sealed up like a coffin, if a coffin had walls of fluff that grew and attacked and entwined and buried a person away from reaching the lid. The more Rodney pulled at the material wrapping around his neck, the tighter it wrenched itself. His wrists and arms were as tightly trapped and he lost the fight when the panic took hold. He suddenly had to focus on breathing. 

That was when he noticed the smell. It was foul and sharp, like sulfur, definitely poison. Trying to tell himself not to breathe made it worse. The glowing light in the pod was enough to show the wisps of purple colored gas filling the chamber. Rodney actually felt the panic turn off then as he watched the smoke around him. The pod closed tight and snug around his arms and chest, closed over the top of his head, and he slumped into the back of it as his legs gave out, the rest of him very warm and… floaty. His eyes drifted closed, blinking and heavy from the grit of the purple air.


	10. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Cyrwin and his family had been pretty damn scared when John had seen them last, but he couldn't ask them what the problem was. Whether it was the raiders they warned him about, or maybe even Wraith, the policy in the hidden bunker was silence, no talking, no moving, nothing to attract attention. Sheppard stayed low, crawled away from the wall to lay down on the couch in the middle of the room, in the dark, and listened to the quiet until he fell asleep. Ignorance was bliss when he was still sick and hungover and his shoulder hurt; he wasn't useful for much unless he had to be, but even then he knew it would be a short fight, so he took his chances on the couch.

After some solid, clueless, sleep in the basement, John woke up on the couch again, this time remembering how he had gotten there. Unlike when he had passed out, he was the only one in the room, which gave him a moment's pause. He found his pack at the end of the couch, still stuffed with food. That reminded him of what he needed to be getting back to, sooner rather than later, and John, tired and sore, slung the bag over his shoulder. He was way past late. He was still sick but he could walk, he was getting better, so he would figure it out on the road.

They had left the door open for him and John reluctantly risked the steep stairs, only a few stumbles from the threatening vertigo. He poked his head up through the hole in the floor and was promptly licked in the face by a dog. John patted the friendly beast and scritched his ears as he climbed out. Cyrwin looked up at him from the home's small kitchen area where he was working with some kind of dough, probably bread. 

"You're awake then?" The greeting was pleasant enough, no trace of the earlier emergency that had them all hidden away underground.

"I think so," replied Sheppard. "How long was I out this time?"

"Well, it's morning again," the man replied. John swore and fisted his hands in his pockets.

"Look, I really gotta get back to the… the well?" His foggy brain couldn't remember what they called it. "I've been gone for days now. It's… not good."

"I'm sure they'll understand. You were mighty sick-"

"They won't. If I don't get back where I need to be, my friend could be killed. I was just sent out to get us food, not to disappear on him," John said, frustrated at himself. Cyrwin frowned, stilled his easy work with the baking.

"You're in trouble?"

"You could say that, yeah," replied John, nodding. "Wasn't kidding when I said I needed help, anyway. Nothing I want to drag anybody into. But I have to get to the well to try to sort it out."

"What kind of trouble?"

John weighed it out, opting to stick with the truth. It had gotten him through so far. "The Wraith have my friend. I have to get him back. We have friends through the well who can do that. I hope."

After tossing the bread dough into a stone pan, Cyrwin started cleaning his hands off on a towel. He looked over at John, face sober and concerned. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't know," he said. "We should have seen you to the well the first day. You should have been gone days ago. You were who they were here for last night."

The man might as well have kicked Sheppard in the gut. The _Wraith_ had been there to collect him and he hadn't been found. He was supposed to be where they left him, supposed to get food and go back. There was a damn tracker in his shoulder for a reason, and it wasn’t for John’s health. He had to go back, had to get to his science geek and make sure nothing happened to him. And all John had to do was sit in a hole in the ground, sick as a dog, and the Wraith couldn’t find him. What did that mean for Rodney?

"They- we were hiding from the _Wraith_?" John pointed to the trap door in the floor, still lying open. Cyrwin nodded.

"They stayed longer than usual. Didn't send anyone into the village, only flew over. No one was pulled away. It was odd, and I would guess you're why," he said.

That didn't make sense to John. The Wraith should have known where he was. They should have been able to track him. He didn't point that out to his host, however. "Look, I didn't mean to bring them here. You've helped me, I don't want anybody to get hurt… I just need to ask for help to get back on the road to the stargate so it doesn't happen again. Just… point me in the right direction again. I should make it this time."

Cyrwin nodded again. He did better than point John in the right direction, though. He got a horse and cart and drove him out to the place. Even with the horse doing all the work, and the dog running along beside, barking and clearing the way of lizards and birds on the road, it took hours. It was a rough ride, especially as nauseous as John was, but it got him there far faster than he would have been able to walk in the heat of the day.

He thanked Cyrwin for the help and tried to send him on his way, but the man seemed reluctant to leave John out on his own.

"What if your friends through the well can't help?" he asked.

"Then they can't help. I still have to get this food back to McKay. We're not dead yet. We can figure something out," John replied.

Cyrwin waved to the stargate, confused. "You could get away, be gone, and you're going to wait for them?"

"Not leaving my friend behind," said John. He pointed the man's attention back to the road. "And I've already dragged too much trouble to your family. So you need to go before anything else happens."

It seemed to get through that time and Cyrwin wished him luck before clicking his horse and cart back toward the village. John waited by the DHD until he was sure the man had gone before he dug into his pack and pulled out the radio earwig. He had to get the team back at Atlantis looped in on his shitty situation and hope they hadn't written anybody off as dead yet. John had no idea how many days they had been gone but it was definitely too long. He dialed the symbols and hoped somebody at home had left the porch light on for him.


	11. Hallucinations

The sun kept dodging behind clouds, just enough to keep away the threat of storms but not enough to promise imminent sunburn. There was no wind at all, which meant the chances of precipitation fell even lower. It was a little muggy and stuffy maybe, but Rodney could live with that. He was warm but not melting, comfortable even. 

He usually didn't go out onto the balconies in Atlantis on his own without reason, but there he stood at the railing, no reason at all to be there. No binoculars in hand, no gadgets taking readings, no noise from some underling in his ear demanding he return to fix something. He just stood in the sun, staring out over the edge of the city, across the water that marked the horizon line. 

There was probably something he was supposed to be doing. In that moment, though, he didn't care to remember. Rodney was comfortable and relaxed. He wanted to stay that way. 

His view of the world flashed, briefly, a misty overlay of glowing blue warping the distant sunset. It was gone in a heartbeat but he noticed it. Rodney frowned and started to reach for the railing, intending to lean against it and look down, to be sure he hadn't seen some echo of an explosion. Something caught his wrist and wrapped around, pulling him back and away from the edge instead.

"Rodney," said John Sheppard's voice, just behind him. John was back, things were fine again. Rodney relaxed and let the man keep hold of his hand then. 

"Where were you?" he asked. "I'm on my own out here…"

John seemed to wrap around him as they stood on the balcony, arms around his ribs, chin tucked over Rodney's shoulder. His body snugged up behind, fitting easily against Rodney like they made a habit of public cuddles. Rodney sunk into his hold and smiled. He liked that. He felt the brush of scruff against his jaw and then open-mouthed kisses on his neck, just to make it perfect.

He wasn't certain he remembered when he and the Colonel had been upgraded from first-names friends to cozy-sunset partners, but Rodney felt it was long overdue. 

They stood there until Rodney was weak in the knees from the attention his neck and throat and jaw and ear received. His stomach hurt from the need it kicked up. He tried to turn in John's hold, to suggest they go inside while he could still walk, but John moved with him, stayed where he was, just out of reach for any return touch. He caught at Rodney's wrists again, pulling them across his chest.

The world flashed blue again, crisscrossing shades of purple tendrils around it. Rodney tried to look out at the ocean and couldn't move his head. He felt like a pile of mush with an exoskeleton keeping him together, but it was just John.

When the world flashed the next time, there was no ocean horizon at all. Rodney couldn't see past the glowing material at the end of his nose. It was blue-gray with veins of green and purple, soft and smothering compared to the view he had just been enjoying. He was awake, his eyes were wide open, and he had stared out at a still sunset until the moment the switch flipped and the view changed. Purple grit stuck to the fleshy layers around him, teasing his nose with sharp, gagging smells. His stomach hurt, because he was hungry, and he was shaky because he hadn't had food in… he didn't know how long. 

Rodney wrestled with the layers of Wraith-ship-guts that wrapped around him, because it definitely hadn't been Sheppard who held him. _Oh god_ was that going to make his life awkward now. He had a healthy imagination and had not at all _ever_ given it permission to feel like reality, to look like reality, and what was he going to do when he saw John again? He was going to apologize, because his mouth tended to work without permission, and that was just the kind of stupid, awkward situation his brain-to-mouth disconnect would put him in. 

The imagined horror story of having to explain the apology kept Rodney distracted from the fact that he could not get loose from the fleshy layers of gooey material that had wrapped around him. He just kept trying, frustrated at himself for the warp in reality, taking it out on the stuff that trapped him in the pod. Working. He had something to work on again. Different layers to outsmart. It would work. He was starving and shaking, so _something_ had to work.

Until, of course, the powdery purple gas leaked back into the pod and Rodney couldn't think anymore.


	12. "Who are you?"

Since Teyla and Ronon had returned without Rodney and the Colonel, no teams had gone through the stargate. The one that had been out had been called back in. The city had been in lockdown for a week as they focused their efforts on locating a Wraith ship in proximity to the planet their men had been taken from. It was a fool's errand, given that the Wraith used space gates themselves, but it was the only potential lead they had. There was nothing helpful on the planet itself. The stargate on the planet they had disappeared from had no dial-outs between the visits from the Atlantis teams, so either the Wraith ships somehow bypassed the known dialing process, or they had simply flown in without the need of a stargate. All possibilities were being explored, and the Daedalus was on the way for any assist they may need. 

The fact of it was that Atlantis was on the lookout for a threat lurking, more so than they were looking to undertake a rescue. It had been over a week; John and Rodney's odds weren't good. They had discussed briefly the possibility that their missing crew were already dead, but no one, least of all Elizabeth, was really ready to commit to the concept as a potential reality. 

In terms Elizabeth assumed Sheppard would approve of, the plan in the meantime was that they could play defense and still hope for an opportunity to bring the offense.

Lockdown, however, was still lockdown. No one was expecting the stargate to activate in the middle of the night. Elizabeth had changed her schedule around because of her recent troubles sleeping, so when the alert came in, she was just heading back from a late dinner in the mess. She ran up the stairs to see Hariman at the comms, with Chuck already gone for the day. The man seemed relieved to see her reappearance and quickly reported the gate status; the iris was engaged and so far no signals had come through.

"Well, I guess we'll wait. I'm almost hoping it's a misdial," Elizabeth replied. There were three immediate possibilities that came to mind, the first being that it was her missing team members coming home without a radio or an IDC to offer, or it was a misdial, or it was a distraction before an attack. They weren't ready for an attack, let alone one that tied up the stargate and made it impossible to relocate the expedition if necessary. And she hoped it wasn't her missing teammates because there was no way in hell she was opening the iris without some confirmation of life. That left the option of a misdial, because there was certainly a first time for everything.

There was a crackling in the earwig radio and Elizabeth ducked her head, cupped her hand over it to hear it better. The channel was staticky and quiet, but something was clicking through.

"-lantis…" came a far-away voice through the radio. It wasn't usually _that_ distorted by the stargate. Elizabeth looked to the others in the room, making sure they heard the noise, too. Both of them nodded. Elizabeth frowned and looked over at the watery gate. She triggered her mic.

"You aren't getting through," she said. "Try again, or try another channel."

There was more static on the active line. The words came more clearly that time but they were still layered under white noise and space. "Atlantis, do you read-" 

"That's better. Who are you?" Elizabeth asked, not sure yet what to make of the call. She looked again at the screen in front of the comms technician and the screen still showed no VHF, no other data transmission. The barely comprehensible radio call was the only thing coming through.

"-Ant Colonel John Shepp-" 

"What the hell-" Elizabeth was beyond frustrated now. Their radios ordinarily had no problems with communication through the stargate. And now, when it was a missing member of her expedition trying to call home, the damn things wouldn't let him get through a full sentence. She looked to the tech in Chuck's chair.

"Was that Colonel Sheppard?" she asked. The man shook his head.

"I wouldn't know, honestly…" he admitted, appropriately uncomfortable, considering he apparently didn't work very often with Sheppard or his team. The other on-duty scientist just shook her head, just as unhelpful. Neither of them recognized the voice. Elizabeth held her hand over her ear again and opened her mic.

"John? If that's you, you aren't getting through-"

"-alive, Elizabeth. We're still alive-" The crackling was going to drive her mad, but she could almost recognize John's voice that time. She had the radio mashed to her ear but she was finally able to hear more than ghost-words under static. "They got-"

Out of patience, Elizabeth ordered the iris open, hoping it would clear up the radio signal. The tech hurried to comply. It helped, but not a lot.

"-but I don't know." That was definitely Sheppard's voice. Elizabeth frowned at the stargate.

"You are hardly getting through, John. Are you alright? Where's Rodney?" she asked.

"I just _said-_ " the static distorted his voice again. "-with the Wraith."

"Where are you?"

"Some planet. I don't know."

"Then come through, we'll figure something out with Colonel Caldwell-" It was a risk, Colonel Sheppard had been gone over a week, but there was something wrong here. He wasn't _asking_ to step through the 'gate.

"Can't, Lizabeth. Tracker. _Wraith_ tracker. Ask _Ronon_ ," said John. It almost sounded like he was half yelling to make himself understood. She almost hoped she had misunderstood.

"Then we can send Dr. Beckett-"

"Can't. I gotta get back to Rodney. But we're alive, okay? Don't lock us out yet. We'll figure something out. I promise," said John. "Gonna close the 'gate. We'll check back."

There was a wash of anger that Elizabeth blamed on her lack of sleep and she glared at the wall of blue that stood between her and the annoying Colonel. That was not the answer she wanted, Wraith tracker or not, and he wasn't even going to let her try to argue him out of the idiotic plan to close them off from help. A hardly decipherable radio call was not a proof of life. She needed a location, she needed to know what had happened to her team. She needed solid answers and he was _literally_ giving her static. "Colonel!" 

A moment later, the stargate snapped closed. She was only half sure it had locked John Sheppard up on the other side of it. And all Elizabeth was left with were questions. 


	13. Hiding Injury

Sheppard waited until Cyrwin and the dog were long gone, preferring not to advertise the address of where he was dialing in _to_ , precisely because the kind stranger offering him a ride to the stargate had also offered the address of the planet he was on. The guy knew how the stargates worked. John had tucked the information away in his mind but he didn't plan to use it for anything; there was no way he could risk telling anyone in Atlantis where he was when there was a chance the Wraith would swoop down on him. He had to keep it short, had to resist the urge to just go home while it was _right there_. 

He wasn't leaving Rodney behind, and that was all there was to it.

His radio had been shot at and missed too many times over the last week alone, with Rodney knocking him in the head, with the Wraith handling it, shoving it in and out of their packs and pockets, everything a fragile piece of technology wasn't built to handle. The call to Elizabeth had been frustrating more than helpful, with too much static. He heard her just fine, but she hadn't heard him. All he had to do was let her know they were still alive. It was all he had time to do, in case the Wraith showed up. 

The sun was still up when John dialed Atlantis. From what Cyrwin had said, he expected hours of daylight still to go. The man still had to get himself and his cart home in what he said was safety, because the roads weren't safe after dark, he had said. He and his wife had both made that quite clear. _Darkness_ brought trouble on the roads.

So it didn't make sense to John when he did get the stargate open, in the middle of the day, on his own and away from the road, why he had the distinct impression he was being watched. It added to his instinct to close the 'gate and kept the call even shorter than he had planned. 

He heard the first shouting hardly a minute after he closed the stargate. A wild, raucous _whoop_ that seemed like the kind of signal that would set off more of them. John wasn't that far from seeing blood-red demon-Wraith in the corner of Cyrwin's basement, so at first, it wasn't clear that he had heard anything at all, but the call set off a rustling across the field from the stargate and John turned to see a line of men running toward from from the trees. 

The stargate was right there and the smart retreat for an unarmed man would have been to dial out and hope for a better place to hide than the middle of an open valley surrounded by flat grassland and crops and orchards. But John couldn't dial his way back to McKay. So instead, he ran. He turned on his boot heel and took off across the tall grass toward an overgrown orchard and hoped he still had a little luck left. 

He didn't know where to go, other than away from the group of angry-sounding humans in their weird rags and fashionable hunting-blind bog-jackets. John wasn't stupid, he knew they had to be as human as Cyrwin and his family had been, but the tangles of rags and branches and weird moss-looking coats and ponchos the group wore could probably have fooled someone into screaming about monsters and aliens. It was just camouflage and John was glad his military had outgrown the need for rolling in a bog as a disguise. But six to one weren't great odds, crazy camo choices notwithstanding. So John kept running.

He didn't make it far before he heard a faint whistle on the air. Again, Sheppard second-guessed himself, not sure he heard what it sounded like. He looked over his shoulder and saw the group from the woods barreling down on him... and a Wraith Dart flying low and headed his way just past them.

He didn't quite risk stopping, but he did turn around and start waving his arms at the sky like an idiot. It made him an easier target for the people chasing him, too, but John was more worried about catching a ride back to Rodney than he was about the local marauders. All the same, he felt something stab at his ribs under his open jacket and fell, twisting to land on his ass. Just before he made contact with the earth, though, the Dart's handy demolecuralizing beam-thingy worked its magic. Suddenly John was landing on his ass on a Wraith ship's delivery pad like fast food dropped off by a drone.

John climbed up to his knees, not quite making it to his feet before the guards stomped out onto the platform. He held his arms up to show he was still unarmed, instantly regretting it as he felt a sharp pain in his chest and up into his arm. He grimaced through it and set his jaw.

"I got food!" he reported, even though he had no idea if the faceless guard goons even talked to understand him. They yanked his pack off his shoulder and pulled him up. John glanced down and saw his shirt had been torn, and he thought he felt blood, so he pulled his jacket closed and held his right arm tight up against his chest. He stumbled along with the guards and was dumped back in the cell. All of Rodney's stuff was still there, including a few days of food, but there was no McKay.

"Hey!" John said, angry and worried as he realized the cell was empty. He turned on the gate as it closed and shoved at the boney bars. "Where's McKay?"

The guards just grunted at him. They took his pack and left. Rather than hurt his ribs again by pushing with his arms and shoulders, John kicked the gate. It was completely ineffective, but it made him feel a little better. Not much, though. He moved back to the nest of foil blankets and backpack-stuff and sank down on it to check his ribs. Something had sliced him, pretty good, too. He fished around for his _other_ ruined shirt to use to clean up the mess. While he was at it, he took the gifted knife out of his boot and tucked it in Rodney's pack; easily reached but much better hidden.

Whatever the marauders had been throwing, it managed to get Sheppard good, straight along his ribs with a big gash. It was a clean slice, even cut his jacket as it flew. It could have just been a rock as easily as a narrowly missed arrow. John was still a little woozy all over so he wouldn't necessarily notice if it had been poisoned, but the skin around the bloody cut didn't seem to have turned any funny colors. It didn't feel too deep, he just had to get it to stop bleeding. 

“This is not my fuckin’ week,” John complained, wincing as he wiped at the cut. He folded the already ruined and crusty shirt up into a mostly-flat wad of cloth and tucked it against the wound, under the shirt he wore. It was just as ripe and John probably stunk more than anything, it had been days of living in the same shirt and he was sick the whole time, but he didn’t have a lot of options. He was bloody and dirty, either way. He had forgotten how cold the ship was, though, and he was left on his own to it this time. So he zipped up his jacket and pinned the makeshift bandage to his side under his arm, hugging his elbow tight up against him to keep it in place. Then he slouched back against the wall and glared at the gates, worried about Rodney now that he knew the blood that had soaked his side wasn’t anything fatal. 

That was where Blue found him when the Wraith showed up to snarl at him through the boney gates. He tossed the pack through the holes but didn’t bother opening the gate to get in his face. John didn’t feel like standing up to get yelled at so he stayed where he was, holding the rag out of sight under his jacket and hoping the general smell of him distracted from the scent of blood that had probably dragged the space-vampire out of hiding.

“Where were you?” Blue demanded. John blinked at him.

“Where you put me. Not my damn fault you couldn’t find me,” John returned. It really wasn’t Sheppard’s fault, and he didn’t feel like quibbling over the details with the guys who wanted to eat him. He pointed to the pack next to Blue inside the gate. “I got food like you told me. Days ago. So where’s McKay?”

“Without food, he had to be put in a pod, to be sure he stayed alive,” said Blue, but he sounded rather snively about it and John narrowed his eyes.

“Well, I brought food, so bring him _back_ ,” he replied.

Behind the gate, Blue crossed his arms and stood a little taller. “You have yet to answer my question.”

John rolled his eyes. “Fine. _What_ question?” 

“Where were you?”

“I told you! On the planet, where you put me. And I ate something that made me sicker than I’ve been in my life, so I don’t know anything more than that. I should have been easy to find,” he said. He was maybe okay with rubbing salt on that particular wound for the Wraith. Blue squinted in at him and unfolded a little.

“You smell foul. This means you’re sick?”

“ _Bad_ sick. I am _really_ not a good meal for you guys, seriously,” John said, shaking his head. “Just send us home, save yourselves the indigestion-”

Blue scowled and stomped as he turned on his heel and left. John smirked after him, taking the small triumphs he was allowed. Reminded of food, he stood up to drag the pack over and plopped down again with it propped between his knees, dug out a bit of bread. He had tried little bits of food throughout the day so he was pretty sure he could keep it down this time.

A few minutes later, Blue came back. And, thankfully, he was dragging a dazed-looking Rodney who seemed a little pink and sweaty, his own kind of sick. He needed food. When the gate was opened and Rodney stumbled in, John made room on the emergency blanket to share and waved him over.

“Rodney! C’mere,” he said quickly. Rodney blinked at him and then diverted course. He stopped at the edge of the blanket and squinted at him when John held up a wedge of some kind of white cheese. “Are you real this time?”

That caught Sheppard by surprise and he paused to take stock for himself. It had been a pretty sketchy few days but he was pretty sure he was real this time. He nodded. 

“Yeah, Rodney. I’m me,” he said, waving him over with the cheese again. Rodney dropped to his knees and crawled forward the extra couple of feet before he could crash down on the wall next to John. He slumped heavily against his shoulder and was way too warm again; definitely needed to eat food. Rodney took the cheese and John tugged the pack closer to start digging for the jerky-stuff he knew was hidden in the bag somewhere. 

“What took so long?” Rodney asked, a familiar complaint that John had certainly been expecting. It made him feel a little better to hear it.

“I got sick, and they couldn’t find me,” he said. “Not my fault they suck.”

Rodney nodded hearty agreement with that. “They suck,” he said around a mouthful of cheese.

“Literally, I guess, but let’s try to avoid any more of that for a while still,” John added. Rodney was out of it because he let out a snort of laughter. John handed him the dried-out chunk of sugar-and-salt scented meat and Rodney shoved the cheese at him in trade. There was something that sounded like a “ _Thanks_ ” in there somewhere but the guy was busy with more important things. 

John wrapped the cheese again and put it back in the bag. He slouched carefully back against the wall after setting the bag away and Rodney leaned in on him again. It pinned John’s arm a little more snug against the cut in his side so he figured maybe Rodney was helping with more than just getting him to warm back up. That changed when Rodney wedged his arm under John’s and pulled him in, a one-armed hug as he curled toward him, like he was cold too. He laced his fingers with John’s, despite the fact that John’s were covered in dried mud and blood. Rodney didn’t seem to notice, he just stared at the gate, spaced out and eating his food. John stayed still, not sure what he had returned to suddenly.

“You okay?” he asked carefully. Rodney nodded, waved with the handful of jerky chunks.

“Much better. Good. All good,” he replied. He frowned a little, seeming to notice the dirt and grass stains on John for the first time. “You?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” John said. He saw a line of purple powder-stuff on Rodney’s face, just off the corner of his eye and reached up to wipe it off with a bit of his jacket sleeve cuff that wasn’t a mess. Rodney didn’t fuss at him for it and settled back to staring at the gate. _Well, this is new_ , John thought, scrunching his nose as he turned his attention to the hall, too. He should probably figure out how to ask about it, as Rodney normally had a much bigger space-bubble. But he didn’t have any ideas that weren’t what he’d already tried, and he didn’t exactly have any complaints, either. They’d figure it out later, when Rodney was a little more like himself.


	14. “I didn’t mean it.” - Alt: “Don’t try to pin this on me.”

The Wraith left them alone again. Apparently they decided food was a sufficient babysitter for their problematic, unwilling houseguests. John wasn't exactly bought off by the food itself; him and food weren't friends again yet even if he wasn't bad off. He remembered being sick and that was enough for him for the time being. But he was bought off by the chance to rest and not be sick, and not be worried about Rodney, and not be worried about missing something. 

Maybe where he was at _sucked_ , but he at least had a clear view of his immediate future, and until the Wraith or Rodney opened the doors for him, his future looked like weird walls and sitting still. Aside from that, Rodney had fallen asleep on him, so he existed as a pillow at the moment and was in no hurry to be anything else until he had to be.

When Rodney woke up, he was more like himself, a little of the sharp glare to his expression and general demeanor than he had been when he was coming down off whatever had drugged him in the pods. He kept hold of John's hand though. 

"You're sure you're okay?" John asked, eyebrow raised at his friend's friendlier-than-usual attachment. Rodney frowned over at him; that was definitely the usual Rodney-face.

"Aside from the fact that we're stranded on a Wraith ship until they can figure out a safe way to kill us without turning themselves blue, sure, of course, this is _entirely fine_. Just another Tuesday, for all I know. Which, for the record, I don't know what day of the week it is because we have been here for actual days at this point-"

John harrumphed at him. "Rodney."

"What."

"Not what I meant."

"Then what-" Rodney went quiet in his surprised way as John held their hands up from where Rodney had wrenched them between their sides. He didn't let go, but he was at least trying to illustrate the remaining bit of un-Rodney lurking after the nap. Rodney very noticeably did not let go, either.

"What? You started it," Rodney replied. John blinked at him.

" _I_ started- don't try to pin this on me. You grabbed me," he said in his own defense. 

"Well, you kissed me," Rodney replied. John stared at him, jaw slack.

"I did _what_ now?" he asked. "I _kissed_ you- when? What- how?"

" _How_?!" Rodney echoed, which John wasn't sure he wasn't mocking him, and it might have been fair, but he was allowed to be a little surprised.

"I'm pretty sure I would _remember_ that sort of thing, Rodney-"

"Well, I certainly do," replied Rodney, sounding reasonably offended. John was feeling cornered and he hadn't even done anything for once. He tugged on their hands, trying to get Rodney to see logic telepathically since words weren't working.

"But _how_? I was on another _planet_!" 

The point seemed to register and Rodney stared at him, the offended, wounded expression fading off to surprise.

"Oh god. You were. You were gone. For days," he remembered. John winced and nodded. He hadn't meant to start a panic. Rodney seemed to process that he still held on to John's hand and then dropped it, waving his hands ineffectively in the air between them as he tried to make reality line up with wherever he had been that he was kissing John Sheppard.

"I'm… I'm sorry, Colonel," he said, very formal, considering it was Rodney when he was trying to hold off some kind of anxiety attack. John frowned at him and then looked down at his boots. He shrugged.

"I mean, there's nothing to be sorry for. I just… think it's shitty there's a _me_ somewhere running around kissing people and it's _not_ me. One of those things where if I'm gonna get stuck with the time, I should at least have done the crime."

"You _what_?"

"Well, you seemed to be okay with it, so I must not be _that_ bad," John reasoned. Rodney stammered at him, not making any actual words happen. John shrugged, stuck in his head about it; Rodney seemed perfectly fine with him when he thought there had been kissing involved at some point, which seemed like it was a thing that could happen, if John weren't a chicken shit about things that were complicated. And _now_ Rodney was going to be weird about it.

"I was hallucinating, Colonel. There was this… purple stuff. It wasn't _real_ ," Rodney clarified, like John was dim. John rolled his eyes and nodded.

"And when you weren't hallucinating, you were fine with it, that's all I'm getting at. So I must have been okay," he replied. It made sense to him, it wasn't his fault the genius wasn't catching on. Rodney made more huffy, frustrated noises and started to stand up, moving away. He paused on his knees though, facing John like there was another lecture coming, and instead caught him by the jacket front to pull him off the wall. John was quickly distracted by the cut at his ribs and the sloppy bandage over it and didn't actually realize Rodney's intent until he felt lips over his own, breath on his face, a nose nuzzled at his cheek. 

Well. That was nice. John relaxed. He liked that. Maybe a lot, as he leaned into it, caught at Rodney's jacket blindly to keep him there. When he eased back from the kiss, John didn't let go, and Rodney stared at him, eye to eye.

" _That_ wasn't a hallucination," John pointed out helpfully. "Pretty sure. I didn't bring _any_ of the tripping berries."

"So… that was just us then?" Rodney asked, still sounding uncertain and frustrated about it. John nodded.

"Yeah, that works," he replied. He kissed Rodney then, just to make sure they were even.


	15. “Run. Don’t look back.”

The entire Wraith-ship experience was surreal, completely unwanted, and cold. Rodney thought about volunteering to sort out their ventilation system just for the sake of his own survival, but he didn't have the first clue how their ships functioned to make the argument. They were biological and mechanical and gross. And Rodney stunk bad enough as it was, he didn't need to go adding more ships-guts to it. They barely got drinking water rations from their captors, so asking for access to a shower was out of the question. He and Sheppard had been stuck in the same clothes for over a week, and the Colonel was quite literally crusty from dried blood and mud, and Rodney's nose couldn't take any more than his miserable living conditions already marinated in.

The worst part, though, was that aside from the faceless guards who showed up to drop off the refilled canteens, they seemed to have been forgotten. Not that he missed the Wraiths' company, but they had to have been picked up for something, and it wasn't likely that the reasoning was to simply stink up one of the cells. The Wraith _wanted_ something. They had just given up on trying to get it. And Sheppard still said he didn't know for certain what it was, not exactly. He said it was something to do with access to Atlantis, but that was a pretty broad target for the Wraith to aim for. Holding hostages in their brig wasn't going to magically make the stargate open for them, and Rodney preferred to think that even the immortal humanoid insects were smart enough to know that.

John had woken up swearing a few times. He had taken to only napping because of what were probably dreams, setting his watch alarm to vibrate every twenty minutes so even if he fell asleep, he wouldn't get far under. He said the Wraith were trying to hack his brain when he slept, warned Rodney to be careful about dreaming. Dreams weren't exactly his area of expertise, but Rodney had been able to tap into his own dreams to unlock solutions to particularly nasty equations and technical bugs in the past, so he planned to try again if there were any signs of Wraith shadows while he slept. Lucid dreaming wasn't that hard, he could figure out some kind of work-around that wasn't the sleep-deprivation John was going to end up with. 

The Colonel was pretty rough, all around, not just the missed night's sleep. On top of the poisoning he had survived on the planet, he had a cut along his ribs that they had no way to care for. The first aid kits in their packs had been confiscated when they first arrived. The best he had was a bloody shirt, folded up different ways to find a clean-enough patch to protect the injury from his shirt and jacket. Rodney's shirt had traces of the purple hallucinogenic on it and was not to be sacrificed to the bandaging after the mess that the powdery gas in the pods had already caused. 

It _was_ a mess, too. There had been many kisses exchanged since Rodney's bent reality had bent the rules, and neither of them seemed to be sorry for it. John was constantly cold, because they were lucky if their cell was twelve degrees Celsius, and it was a wonderful way to pass the time and keep each other warm. The messy part was that it was John, his best friend, and there were rules back home that were very definitely not in their favor when it came to continuing what they had very definitely started. 

Assuming they ever _made_ it home. Which was starting to look sketchy as another day passed without a chance to get as far as out of the cell. 

By Rodney's best guess, piecing together his own distracted monitoring of his wrist watch, and John's patched-together recollection of his time on another planet, they hadn't seen Atlantis in over ten days. And hour by hour, as they paced the cell, ate their way through their limited rations, even made out like teenagers a few times, Rodney kept track as that number kicked ever closer to twelve days. Elizabeth was going to lock up the 'gate and never let them back through. John's call back to Atlantis probably only made the woman more paranoid; it would have made Rodney change the codes if he had been in her place.

"I had to do something, McKay. Kinda limited on options, here," John pointed out, and he wasn't _wrong_. But Rodney still worried about it. John left him to it, standing up to pace again, even checking the cut on his ribs in the better light near the gate. He curled his lip at it and folded the shirt up over it, zipped his jacket closed determinedly right up to his chin. Rodney started to ask what he had seen of the wound but boots sounded in the hall and John's attention went sharply to the world beyond the cell door.

Blue showed up, and he was still noticeably _paler_. A little less _blue_ , but still a lot less Wraith-green. He seemed cranky about that, too. 

"You're not looking healthy there… you sure you're okay?" John asked, a polite taunt but still baiting the monster. Rodney stood up but stayed back. There was a knife in their pack, but it was not exactly the best way to win a fight with an angry Wraith.

"What is the status of your supplies?" Blue asked, very intentionally not responding to the question. 

"Food's getting low, and we need water, like usual," replied John. The Wraith beyond him waved toward the packs.

"Then get your things. You will have exactly thirty hours this time. When we return, you will be where we leave you or you will be left there and your friend will starve. Is that clear?" 

John glanced back at Rodney then. Like he was asking for a second opinion. Rodney shut his mouth, offered a nervous shrug. He didn't like the idea, but he didn't see how they had a lot of room to argue. It seemed to be enough and John looked back out at Blue and nodded. 

"Fine," he said. He went back to grab the food pack - the one the knife had been moved to - and shoved one of the foil blankets inside, unfolded and taking up space. There were probably a few MREs still in the pack being left behind so Rodney kept his mouth shut about the loss. He dug through the pockets on the other pack until he found a compass, which would maybe, hopefully, be enough to get John an origin point to return to, and handed it over to the guy who would maybe actually need it. John took the tool and hesitated on the way back to the gate this time, met Rodney face to face, like he had something to say. He didn't quite manage it, instead gave up, leaned in for a kiss. It seemed like saying goodbye and Rodney frowned as he moved away. That wasn't why Rodney had kissed him when they started; even when he was hallucinating, Rodney knew those were for _hello_ , not _goodbye_. 

Still, John went to stand in front of the gates to be let out so that he could chase down another few days of food. The gates opened and he stepped out, unhassled as he adjusted the pack on his back. The gates stayed open, though. Blue waved at Rodney.

"You, too. You will wait in the pods. As before," Blue said. And the Wraith said it with his creepy dripping teeth in a smile before looking over at John. The first hint of a protest from the Colonel had him pulled roughly aside by one of the guards, and John bit his tongue, glared at the Wraith instead. 

"I really think it would be better if I stayed in here," Rodney said, a token effort more than an argument. If it worked, _great_ , but if it didn't, well… he at least had more nice things to hallucinate about _this time._

"I disagree," said Blue. He curled a hand to invite Rodney out, and it seemed like a good idea, so Rodney went along with the order. When he was out in the hall, he recognized the Wraith suggestion he had gone along with, belatedly sorted out the different thoughts in his head, and looked to John for help. The plan to think of other things only worked when he recognized the Wraith were in his head in the first place. What were they getting out of him when he was under the purple-influence? What had they already dug out?

"Oh boy," he muttered, suddenly fighting an urge to run even though he knew there was nowhere to go. John looked at him for a moment before he caught his hand and tugged him bodily away from the three Wraith around them. 

" _That_ wasn't my idea," Rodney said, just for the record. He wasn't sure how else to warn the Colonel that he was so far oh-for-two on keeping the Wraith out of his head. John just squeezed his hand as they were escorted through the ship. Rodney had already seen the route and it didn't hold his attention past the worry about the purple gas-pod he was moving closer to. 

When they got to the pod, John kept hold of him. He pointed their joined hands down the hall, at the docking bay just barely visible.

"We're going down there, right?" he asked. The Wraith smiled at him.

"Momentarily."

"Well, then let him see me go. He'll calm down, the whole pod-situation will work out better," John said. 

"No," said Blue, not at all interested in negotiating the arrangements.

"Come on. He's gonna keep panicking. And when humans panic, we burn energy, and _he's_ gotta go without food for thirty hours, so he's gotta be calm when you stick him in the pod or he'll burn up energy too fast and be sicker when he gets out," John argued. Blue stared at him and then slid his glare over to Rodney, considering it. Then he relented. 

"Fine."

It didn't actually make Rodney any calmer to be led down the hall further to the cavernous ship loading area with the multiple levels of landing pads and the dark drop around them. A few minutes reprieve would still put him back in the pod when Sheppard was gone. But John had an absolutely unrelenting grip on his hand so Rodney went along with it. The Wraith marched them out to a short drop-off pad that jutted out from the side of the cave and then hung back to trap them on it. Blue caught Rodney’s elbow to make him stop, and John stopped when he did, apparently content to wait. There was only one way off the platform and they blocked it, leaving Rodney with John not even halfway to the drop-off pad at the end of the weird dock. 

John stood calmly at the neck of the walkway, like he was fine with the arrangement. He kept hold of Rodney's hand, their fingers laced together, and watched the upper levels. He pointed out an approaching Dart with a nod of his head.

"There's our ride," he said quietly. Rodney blinked, not sure he had heard him. 

"What-" But suddenly John was moving and dragging Rodney with him. 

"Run. Don’t look back,” the Colonel ordered. He pulled Rodney ahead of him and started to push as the Wraith behind them seemed to catch on. The Dart sweeping overhead engaged the beam and Rodney ran for it. He jumped into it, still hanging on to John, and had to hope there wouldn't be any weird entanglements when they got kicked out of the Dart later. 

As soon as the thought processed, however, Rodney was dropping down from his jump onto dirt and grass. John Sheppard stumbled along with him, a smile on his face and their hands still folded together.


	16. Broken Bones

The new planet was warmer, more humid than cold. They could run, they had food, so Rodney picked a direction and John followed. The goal was to find a stargate. If not, a city that could point them toward one. Lacking either of those, John just wanted a cave or something to take cover in before the Wraith got a lock on the tracker in his shoulder. There was no way Blue was going to let them stay down on the planet's surface after that dumb trick; John was amazed the Dart that had caught them up hadn't been immediately instructed to put them down again. Blue probably didn’t have the authority he pretended he did. John wasn't going to go complaining about the fact that the Wraith were shit at internal command communications, he was just surprised. And a little tired.

There would be no napping, however, until they found the stargate and a planet _somewhere else_ to hide on. In the meantime, Sheppard was jumpy, on alert for Darts and Wraith troops. It was very different now. Trying to keep Rodney _away_ from the Wraith was nothing at all like looking out for the Darts because they were the only way back to him.

"Maybe when you get home, you guys could put together some kind of 'gate Finder, like a compass or something that always points at the stargates," John suggested at one point, maybe a little too tired for his own good. 

"Oh, right. Tuck that one in right after the zedpm and the data crystals. Should only take us a few decades," Rodney replied dryly. John nodded back; it sounded good to him.

An hour later, they still hadn't been scooped up by the Darts. Not a single one had even shown up looking for them. John wasn't sure what to make of it. They didn't find any villages or cities, either, on their trek. Only foothills and trees, and something smelled like water, which made John think maybe they were close to a lake. Eventually the lake came into view and John experienced a sudden change in plans. It was clear water, almost blue in places, and smelled sweet. He was dehydrated and exhausted and there was a whole _lake_ he could drink. 

"You don't know if that's safe," Rodney pointed out. John was already shedding the food pack and unzipped his jacket. He climbed out onto some rocks, with the water lapping in and out between them, and stared down at the open water where the rocky edge gave away, thought very seriously about just jumping in.

"I'm gonna worry about that later," Sheppard replied. But he did touch the water with his hand first, waited for any hint of some kind of weird acidic burn or other reaction, and then started washing his hands in it. A few small fish poked their mouths up at him to investigate, but there was no biting. He scooped up a little of the water to taste then. It was a bit salty maybe, but it was fine. John stood up again and moved back across the rocky beach to the dirt and grass where Rodney waited. "We're good."

"Says you and what chemical test?" said Rodney, looking at him like he had lost his mind. John shrugged it off, along with his dirty shirt.

"My nose," he said. He got his shoes and socks off and left them and his pants with his shirt on the pack. Rodney hesitated, looking him awkwardly up and down as John stood there in boxers, bare feet on wet rocks. It took a minute for John to catch on; they had shared rooms and tents before, stripped for emergency quarantine safety washdowns, even found swimming holes on planets that Teyla knew to be safe, and it had all been different then. It didn't maybe-matter then. 

John squared his shoulders and looked back at Rodney with a slight grin. It didn't matter now, either. 

"Get busy, McKay. We've got shit to do. This is a _bath_ , not a striptease," he said, smug even though he all-over felt like a pile of stale and stinky Wraith-bait. Rodney shut his mouth at least. Cheating just a little, John stepped in long enough to steal a kiss before heading back out over the rocks to the drop off into deeper water. He could see the bottom, crystal clear water warning of any lurking bugs and fish and _whatevers_ that the planet wanted to throw at him. Then he jumped in, because he was tired of over a week of grime and blood and dirt messing with his head. It stung on the cut across his ribs, but not enough to chase him out of the water.

Rodney waited around a few minutes to make sure he wasn't eaten or attacked by leeches before joining him, right around the time John was missing surfboards and the ocean and thinking he needed to get back on solid land. But he kindly waited for Rodney rather than abandon him. 

It wasn't like they were on vacation or anything, but a few minutes of not worrying about running seemed like a risk they could take. Especially when Rodney went out to meet John where he was swimming, out where they could barely touch the bottom of the lake, and he caught him in a hug. Then McKay got him back for saying they were too busy for stripteases, with a thorough kiss that hit a _lot_ different when they were little better than naked under the shifting pressure of the lake's idle tide.

Before too long, though, they were back in dirty clothes and hiking along in search of either a stargate or someone who could point them in the direction of one. They snuck food out of the pack along the way rather than risk another stop. 

The sun was sinking lower as they took out walking across an overgrown, grassy field. It wasn't the safest course, but Sheppard could see a smoke trail sneaking up into the sky somewhere beyond some trees in that direction and he didn't want to lose the lead. They could stomp down grass as tall as their hip if it would get them home faster, they just had to be careful about it. John led the way, using the pack as a blunt shield to help cut a wider trail. 

The trouble, though, hit once they were through. The field was bordered by a long, narrow hill, like a levee or a natural wall. Climbing out wasn't hard, it was only ten feet or so, but the back side of the thing dropped off fast while the grass still disguised the ground below them. John fell on his ass and slid down on his hip, getting tangled in the pack he held out in front of him. 

"Ow…" came the report from Rodney a moment later. John had heard him fall, too. He pushed himself back up to his feet and looked out at a well-tended, loose-dirt field, no grass, aside from the occasional weeds. It was farmland, which meant there had to be people _somewhere_. 

Rodney, though, was still making unhappy, pained noises, and John looked over to see he hadn't yet stood up. He moved over to check on him.

"You okay?"

"Peachy," replied Rodney, in a tone that sounded more like _pained and angry._ He was very carefully trying to pull his jacket away from his arm and _that_ couldn't be a good sign. John crouched beside him to try to help. Rodney allowed it and then immediately started fussing at him for it.

"Oww! Oww- not-"

"Knock it off a minute, Rodney," John grouched back at him. By the time they peeled the jacket sleeve away, Rodney's arm had already started to swell slightly a few inches above the wrist. Sheppard winced in sympathy. "I'm guessing that hurts, huh?"

"What was your first clue," returned Rodney. He was definitely growling. He had probably broken it, because Rodney normally bounced up from his various hits and misses across their bad luck, and this time he hadn't even tried to stand up yet. After a week away from home on questionable rations, he was looking a little leaner than usual and a broken bone might slow him down. Either way, they were both in for a bad time because they had no way to care for it, not even tape, and it was going to make their search for the 'gate that much more difficult.

"It'll be fine until we can get Carson," Rodney said, trying to stubborn his way through it. But he still curled in over the arm, didn't move to stand and leave. John shook his head, held out his hand as he knelt beside him. 

"I'm not Carson but lemme check it first," he replied. He had seen his share and knew what to look for, how much they could push it, if at all. There was no blood, no bones sticking out, but if they needed to splint it, they would take the time. Rodney grumbled at him but caught his hand. He could barely grasp back and reacted instantly when John carefully slid his other hand anywhere near the swelling. That was enough and John settled his arm back against Rodney's leg before starting to shrug out of his jacket. 

"What are you-"

"Swelling is bad, we've got nothing to work with here, so we're gonna fake it to keep it down. Means elevate it. This is the best we've got for a sling, right?" As he spoke, John set the jacket out and started digging through the food pack for the knife he was very grateful not to have fallen on with the way their luck was going.

"It's your jacket," replied Rodney. "You _need_ that."

John shrugged. "I'm operating under the assumption that we'll be off this planet by dinner and at least one of us will be back in Atlantis for the supply run. I'll get a new jacket later."

"Yeah but you don't have to kill the jacket-" Rodney stopped complaining about it when John actually took the knife to the jacket. It wasn't likely an _end_ to the complaining, just a resignation that there was no point arguing about the loss of the jacket once it was already murdered. He watched and huffed a few times as John cut a few long pieces that he could work out a sling with and some shorter ones to fake a brace to try to apply pressure. Rodney guarded his arm close, squinted at the number of strips being cut up. John finally figured he had stalled enough, tossed the knife back into the pack before he looked back over at his friend. 

"Look, this is gonna suck," he said, waving the handful of material. "But it'll help, and we can keep moving. So… let's go."

Rodney sulked, hung onto his arm to keep it out of John's easy grasp, before reluctantly nodding a minute later. He reached for the material John had cut up and started trying to figure out how to wrap his arm himself. John let him fight with it briefly before taking over the project.

"Let me get it, McKay," he said, quiet.

"I can do it," Rodney said. John rolled his eyes. 

"You can barely hold the thing. You're shaking, Rodney. If you mess it up, it's just going to hurt worse," John pointed out. Rodney still tried to glare at him but John had stopped paying attention to _that_ face a few years earlier.

"Fine," Rodney said, grousing. John reached over and brushed Rodney's messy, damp hair back as an excuse to pull him into a kiss, just to momentarily distract them both onto something that _didn't_ suck. They were still together, and if they got to the stargate soon enough, maybe they could stay that way. They just had to get Rodney moving again first. 


End file.
